Now There Were Monsters
by SGE
Summary: After the events of season 1, will George and Nina be able to pick up the pieces and go on with their lives together?
1. Chapter 1

Now There Were Monsters

Expo – this is a post-ep for season 1 of Being Human. It's set about 2 weeks after episode 6.

Rated about 15, for language mainly.

Disclaimer – Being Human and all its lovely characters belong to Toby Whithouse who is a much better writer than I am. No infringement is intended, and certainly no financial benefit is being made.

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It was the nights that were worst, for Annie. The long hours when everyone else slept in their beds, and she just… didn't. She remembered sleep, like she remembered food and drink and warmth and human contact, but it remained separate from her, far away, a distant concept that she couldn't touch.

So instead she would sit in her chair and think, or sometimes sneak downstairs and put the telly on really low to avoid waking the boys. Or sometimes she would stare out of the window at the dark world below, the occasional car rushing past, people going about their nightly business, never looking up, never noticing the pale face staring down at them from the window.

And that's what she was doing now: staring out. It was quite a cold night, clear, a few stars just visible beyond the light pollution of the city, the new moon just rising over the horizon seeming oddly bright. Her mind wandered on these occasions, ran over events from the near past, or recalling details from her life that would replay over and over again. It was oddly satisfying, a tie to her former self and what she had been when life had pumped through her veins, before Owen had taken everything that she was and left her on the fringes of existence. Remembering her family in particular brought her pleasure, touched with nostalgic sorrow usually for what had once been, but leaving her happy for all that.

A noise in the corridor made Annie turn her head sharply. That was odd. Was there someone in the house? There were footsteps on the stairs, soft, deliberately soft, and she peeled herself away from the window and from her memories, to listen intently, moving towards the door and cracking it open just slightly.

There was no one outside, and the sound of footsteps had now faded, making her wonder for just an instant whether she had imagined the whole thing. Then there was a sound from the kitchen, what sounded like water running. Now that would be an odd thing for an intruder to do, she reassured herself, rolling her eyes at her own unfounded fears, and pulling the door more fully open. She stepped out into the corridor, noting that George's door was standing ajar, and made her way softly down the stairs, avoiding the ghostly teleport she sometimes used in favour of good old fashioned walking.

Downstairs, George was sitting slumped at the kitchen table wearing his dressing gown. The kettle was just beginning to boil on the countertop behind him.

"Hi," Annie said cheerily, coming into the room. For her, one of the advantages of not sleeping was that she didn't have to adjust her mood to the time of day.

George wasn't so fortunate. He jumped visibly at the sound of her voice. "Oh! Hi," he responded. "Sorry did I…? No, you don't sleep do you?"

Annie shook her head, still smiling, happy for the company. "Not even a bit. What's up, you got an early shift today?" She glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was twenty minutes past three.

George shook his head. He wasn't wearing his glasses, and had that disheveled air that most people did when just out of bed. He rested his cheek on his hand wearily. "I couldn't sleep," he explained.

"Oh," she said, coming further into the room and pulling out a chair. She slumped into it. "Why?' she asked, curious. The concept of people who were still alive not being able to sleep was one that puzzled her.

He shrugged. "Nina."

"Still going over the break up, trying to figure out where the wheels came off?"

George looked at her disdainfully, amazed sometimes by her insensitivity. But then again, he could be insensitive himself, so he it was a trait he forgave. He rubbed his face.

"I just keep running over it, what she said, over and over," he sighed. "And it just – doesn't make sense somehow."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know," he said, hearing the kettle boil then click off, and getting up to make himself some tea. "It just seems unlike her somehow." He poured in some milk. "I mean, when it happened with Julia – my ex – when she freaked out about the werewolf thing, I pretty much expected it. Our entire relationship had had this slight air of non-permanence. I always had this feeling she was just looking for an excuse to make a sharp exit."

"I thought – you were going to get married," Annie said, confused.

George turned with the mug in his hand. "Yeah, that was the story. Whether it would have happened, you know, if all this other – stuff hadn't got in the way, I don't know. But we were engaged." He took a sip of his tea. "Until I met the werewolf."

"You can hardly blame her!" Annie pointed out. "Didn't you let like your whole family and everyone you knew think you were dead?"

"I ran away," George confirmed. "Of course I did; from her, from everyone, but then when she found me again and found out, I thought maybe we might actually be able to… But that was it. Too much for her."

"Maybe it's too much for Nina too," Annie suggested. "It is a lot to take in."

George screwed up his face and shook his head. "Not for Nina. She took it so well, considering, when she found out. Yes she was a bit colder afterwards and we hadn't been – you know, but it took her two weeks to tell me that she wanted to break up? It took her that long to decide? And she doesn't trust me any more? She knew I was keeping a big secret from her. I never hid it. I just didn't tell her what it was." He shook his head again. "No, I don't understand it at all." He drank some more tea.

"Have you tried talking to her about it?" Annie asked.

"I tried," he said. "But since our 'conversation' she's been surprisingly unwilling to talk to me. She keeps avoiding me in the hospital. I see her making detours when she spots me coming."

"So what are you going to do?" she wondered.

"I don't know." George looked despondent. "Give up I suppose. Accept that having a werewolf for a boyfriend is just too much for your average girl to cope with. I mean, when you were alive, would you have dated someone like me?"

"Oh, well," Annie was caught off guard. "Someone like you, I mean George you're not really my type – I mean if you look at Owen…"

"Hypothetically," he sighed. "And think werewolf not me."

"I really don't know," she admitted. "It's just not something you think about: date a footballer, date a werewolf. Maybe everybody's missing out. Maybe everyone should want to date a werewolf. Didn't you say you turned into a bit of an animal in bed just before your time of the month?"

George looked uncomfortable. "That was – only the once!" he protested. "And only because she practically forced it on me."

"No George, I'm saying it's a good thing: wild sex. Who wouldn't want that?"

"Nina apparently," he huffed. "We had great sex. And we had great everything else too. Uh!" he exclaimed. "Why did she have to see me changing? It's ruined everything!"

"Weren't you going to split up with her anyway?" Annie said, cornering the market in pointing out inconvenient truths.

George slurped his tea. "I kept trying to," he said. "But it never quite worked out. Fate seemed to be pushing us together always. Anyway," he shook his head, brushing his woes aside. "How about you? Have you had any luck with your quest for the portal?"

"What, my am-I-stuck-here-forever-now question?" she said. "Well, as a matter of fact – I haven't. But, I have found a really good book in the library which I want one of you boys to go and pick up for me at some point. It's about life after death. I think it's one of those strange cult things."

"Sounds fantastic," he said scathingly. "That won't be embarrassing to collect at all."

"Shut up," she scoffed at his sarcasm. "At least I'm trying here."

"Hm," he said. "What does Mitchell say?"

"That he thinks I'm stuck here now. That I only get one shot at the portal, and then that's it: log-jammed forever."

"Seems a bit harsh."

She smiled softly. "There's a lot about this that seems harsh."

"Yeah," he agreed decisively, putting down his mug and coming over to the table once more. "There is. But I'm going to attempt to sleep through it."

"You going back to bed?"

"Yup, and if I don't sleep this time, I'll come back and get you to smother me with a pillow or something."

"Okay," she said, surprisingly willingly. "Just say when."

He smiled. "See you in the morning Annie."

"Night George."

Mitchell came out of the hospital with a fag already out of the packet and ready to light up. He flinched at the sunlight, which was already strong and hot, despite it being only April. He hated this time of the year, because it only meant more pain and misery until things started to quiet down again in the solar region in the autumn.

It was while he was glancing away from the light, that he caught sight of Nina, perched on the bit of wall she usually occupied for her daily puffs. He considered his own white stick. This was, after all, the perfect opportunity to talk to her in a reasonably relaxed, public, yet out-of-earshot place. But would she talk to him? That was the question. He'd seen very little of her at all in the last couple of days, and the one time he'd passed close to her in the corridor, she'd pointedly looked the other way and ignored him, talking to a fellow nurse.

Well, the lighter gambit had worked once before. It couldn't hurt to try it again.

He crossed to her quickly. "Got a light?" he asked.

Nina looked at him sardonically, blowing out smoke, and for a moment, he thought she was going to ignore him again. But she handed the lighter over with obvious reluctance.

"If you've come out here to try to talk me into getting back with George, you can piss off right now," she said directly.

"Hey," Mitchell said out of the corner of his mouth and he tried to light the cigarette. "I just came out here for a break." Clouds of white smoke started to puff out from the end of his cigarette, and he handed the lighter back to the nurse. "Besides. What the two of you do is none of my business."

The look on her face implied fairly strongly that she didn't believe him.

"It just isn't going to work, Mitchell," she insisted, seemingly trying to talk him out of talking her out of it, before he'd even opened his mouth. "I mean, we're talking about trust here."

"Yeah, I know," he said back. "He told me what you said to him. Of course, you understand that my loyalties lie completely with him."

She shrugged. "I wouldn't expect it any other way."

They smoked for a few seconds in relative silence.

Mitchell decided to stop beating around the bush. "When are you going to tell him?" he said.

"Tell him what?" she said, crossly.

"That he scratched you," he dropped in unexpectedly.

She looked genuinely floored and her jaw actually dropped open in a rather comical manner as she stared at him in shock. But then she turned on him angrily. "How do you know?" she hissed, furious.

"Come on," he said, unmoved by her emotion. "How do you think I met George? Vampires can recognize werewolves, and…" he broke off. Her anger had brought about an instinctive mirror emotion in him, but it wasn't the way he wanted this conversation to go. What had happened was awful, for her, for George, for all of them. And he wanted her to know that. "Nina, I'm so sorry." His regret was genuine, and it cut her anger, dispelling it into the April sunshine.

She drew back from him. "Did you know he'd scratched me?" she demanded. "On the night I mean. Have you known all this time?"

Mitchell shook his head. "I didn't know. But I – sensed – what you were becoming, and going back over things in my head – it's not like I saw him bite you. Was it when you ran in, when he, sort of, threw you away?"

Nina slapped her hand over her eyes. "I'm so fucking stupid," she cried. "You were, all of you, trying to protect me and stop me going in there and I just – I just wanted to help him. I didn't know what was happening."

"How could you?" Mitchell countered.

"I just saw him in pain, he was in such… and I thought I could help. You all said not to but of course, I, I knew best. I always have to know best. Jesus," she had another puff at her cigarette.

Mitchell regarded her with sympathy. "Where did he scratch you?" he asked.

She left the cigarette in her mouth and pulled up her right sleeve. He winced slightly at the sight of the four still-red marks on the inside of her wrist. But then something occurred to him.

"How have you kept that hidden from him?"

She pushed down her sleeve again. "I denied him sex," she said bluntly, taking the cigarette out her mouth. "And then I broke up with him."

Mitchell nodded in understanding. "So that's what this is all about. It's not a trust thing, you're not afraid of him or unsettled or any of that shit. You're just trying to prevent him from finding out what he did to you."

She didn't look at him, staring at the ground instead, her eyes unfocussed. "I thought that maybe we could go back to the way things were – just colleagues – and he wouldn't need to know. I thought that he would accept it if I said that it freaked me out, and that I was angry that he'd lied to me and not told me. And he did."

"Do you love him?" Mitchell asked her.

She nodded, staring at the ground. "I didn't expect to. I didn't – want to even. I thought it would just be a brief fling or something." She took another drag. "But then it just, happened, you know? You just realize one day that you're totally and completely stupidly in love with someone, and you don't even know why, you just are."

"You've got to tell him," Mitchell insisted. Nina shook her head. "He'll find out!" Mitchell went on. "The wolf is in him, even when he's not transformed." She looked at him finally, surprised by what he was saying. "The closer he gets to a full moon, the sharper his senses get, and he'll know. He'll sniff you out. Even if he never sees you transform, no matter how hard you try to hide him from it, he'll just know."

"Then I'll leave," she said. "I'll go away, far away. He'll never see me again."

Mitchell grimaced. "You could. That's what he did when he found out, when he first changed. It terrified him, what he was becoming, and he left everything and ran. He had a life, a family, a fiancée even." By her expression at that, it was clear this was something George hadn't shared with her yet, but Mitchell ignored it. "And he left it all and had nothing. He was working in a café when I found him, putting rubbish out. The guy's like 50 times smarter than I am, and he had nothing. He'd left everything that he cared about, his entire future, because he was scared that he was becoming a monster and he didn't want to put everyone else at risk."

"Exactly!" she exclaimed. "It's his biggest fear, he told me. His biggest fear was infecting someone else, that and – killing someone."

"Well great, he managed them both in the same night," Mitchell said glibly.

"It'll destroy him," she said, annunciating every word. "If I tell him that he scratched me it'll absolutely destroy him. He's got this – thing – he's so bloody," she searched for the right word. "Caring," she decided. She stubbed out her cigarette vigorously, and got her packet out, searching for another one. But she scrabbled among the packaging. It was empty. Mitchell quickly offered her one of his, which she accepted, screwing up the empty packet in her hand, and throwing it onto the floor. "I mean, what's it all about," she lit the cigarette, becoming more agitated. "This werewolf thing. How can they exist? How can no one know about them? How can they – exist! It's like a disease or an infection that's so old and so terrible that no one knows about it and no one talks about it. I mean, he told me, or he didn't tell me, tell me, but he said there was something dark in his life and when I found out about it, I would walk. But he didn't let on or even hint that the world was actually full of werewolves and vampires and who fucking knows what else." She stopped, shaking slightly.

Mitchell almost didn't know what to say. He knew it was a huge amount to take in; that the world was a darker place than most people could ever imagine, or even begin to comprehend in their blackest dreams. These things had become only the fodder for light entertainment: Hammer horror, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. People didn't want to think that these things were actually real, that those stories we'd told around the fire in stone and turf houses bathed in wood smoke, were based on truth; warnings no less pertinent to our lives than the lessons we learned from our mothers about wild berries and wild beasts in the forests. We were supposed to be afraid of monsters, we were never supposed to become them.

"Do you blame him for what happened?" he asked eventually, as his own cigarette burnt down to the filter and he stubbed it out.

She shook her head. "Not for a minute," she said. "He tried everything to avoid putting me in danger. He'd broken up with me for Christ sake. He didn't want me there. He didn't want me within a million miles of there. And I don't know, maybe it's just because I haven't gone through it yet, because I don't know enough about it, or what it's going to do to me, but I'm not – scared. Things – happen," she explained, philosophically. "Things happen in our lives, in everyone's lives. If they happen because of someone else's deliberate actions, then yes, it's someone's fault. But the world is so complicated. Everything we do has all these little tiny consequences that we could never possibly anticipate. You shout at someone at work, they go home and batter their girlfriend. It's just what happens. And we don't have one state of being. We change constantly and this is just – somehow – what's next for me."

Mitchell smiled slightly, suddenly seeing clearly what George found so attractive about this woman.

She turned to him. "What is it like?" she asked. "The transformation?"

His smile faded quickly, and he zipped up his leather jacket. "You'd have to ask George."

"I'm asking you," she said.

He considered the question for a few seconds, seriously considering saying: 'I really don't know' or 'it's not that bad'. But she was too smart for that.

He held out his hand for his cigarettes, and lit a second one up when she handed them over. "It's a nightmare," he said bluntly, nodding a little as he blew out new smoke. "Your whole body changes, tears itself apart from the inside to become the wolf." She shut her eyes, and raised her chin a little as she took it in. "Every bone breaks, every muscle rips, and your organs shut down and shift and change size, it's like you die really, but you don't die, you just endure it. And then you become this – beast – this thing that you can't control and that wants to kill. George just," he pictured his friend in his head, transforming. "He screams and he screams and it's awful – it's awful. But then it's over. And it's once a month. But it's forever."

"Unless you die," she said, smiling sweetly and opening her eyes. She wasn't naive after all. She was a nurse, and she saw people in pain and suffering and dying every day. She'd seen and heard it too, George transforming, his pathetic screams of agony as his body betrayed him and ripped and re-modeled itself. She might not have gone through it yet, but he was pretty sure she could guess what it was going to be like, or at least start to imagine it, because he was also pretty sure that it was so terrible, so gut-wrenchingly painful that you couldn't allow yourself to imagine fully what it was going to be like.

"But he can help you," Mitchell insisted. "He had this guy, this other werewolf, who was a complete wanker actually, stayed with us a couple of months ago. George really got a lot out of meeting someone like him, however much of an idiot he was."

"Another werewolf?" Nina asked. "How many of them are there?"

Mitchell shrugged. "I doubt anyone knows. Not many though. This guy, Tully, he was the first one apart from George that I'd seen in, 20 years maybe."

Her eyes narrowed. "How old are you, Mitchell?"

He puffed on his cigarette. "Old enough," he responded grumpily. "So are you going to talk to him?"

"I don't know," she sighed, stubbing her second cigarette out with much less vigour than the first. "It's all just happened so fast, and I had to make that decision to break up with him, you know, because otherwise I knew I wouldn't be able to hide the scratches from him."

"Talk to him," Mitchell insisted. "This is a lonely world, Nina, and being what we are makes it lonelier. In many ways, vampires do this really well. When they bring someone over, they care for them and show them what to do – however monstrous it all is. But werewolves, they don't even know what they're doing when they get someone. There's no support."

"Maybe they need a helpline they can phone up," she joked softly. "Wolves anonymous or something."

He chuffed out a laugh. "It could be an untapped market." Then he got serious again. "If you want to talk," he said. "About this again, or about talking to George, I want you to know that I'm here for you. I know we don't know each other very well, but I understand something of what you're going through, and I understand him – sort of."

She looked at him and gave him a genuine smile of gratitude. "Thanks," she said. "Really." Then she puffed up her cheeks and blew out a breath slowly. "Eight days," she said, referring quite clearly to how long it was until the next full moon.

"Talk to him," Mitchell said one last time. "He'll take it hard, there's no denying that. But if I know George, then the thought of him doing this to you, and then you suffering alone because you didn't want him to know would be much worse than just knowing what he'd done to you." He put a hand on her shoulder. "Really. We're there for you. You're not on your own."

She smiled gratefully, as he turned and left her. But the smile faded as he walked away.


	2. Chapter 2

When Mitchell got home that night, clutching his bag of shopping, Annie was in the kitchen, cooking.

"Hey," he said, wandering in and throwing down his keys.

"Hi," she responded in her little sing song voice, looking over her shoulder from the cooker.

"What are you doing?" He asked, putting milk away in the fridge.

"Making some food," she said. "You hungry?"

"Yeah," he said uncertainly, crossing to behind her so that he could see what she was cooking. It was something bubbling away heartily in a pan.

"It's a curry," she said. "Beef and – " she looked over at a tin on the counter to remind herself. "Chickpea," she finished.

"Okay," Mitchell said. "When did you start cooking?"

"When I realized I wasn't going anywhere, so I might as well make myself useful."

"You've accepted that then."

"Yeah, well, there doesn't seem much choice does there. I don't know who makes up the rules about these things, and it's totally mental, but I do seem to be stuck here."

"Annie," Mitchell moved towards her. "It might not be forever. And there might not be 'rules' for this. Who knows what happens next for you. Maybe it's something better."

"You think?" she said, suddenly angry. "Don't you think that, if there was something better all those ghosts that chose to go through the portal would have done so? They didn't want to be stuck here any more than I do!"

"You don't want to be here that badly?"

She threw her hands out. "Well I don't know," she said. "At least having you here means that I won't be lonely I suppose, even if it is forever. But it's not like George is going to hang around here for the rest of his life."

"Hm," Mitchell said. "You spoken to him recently?

"Yeah," she said, turning back to the cooker. "And it turns out I'm a better chef than I am a councilor."

"What do you mean?" Mitchell wondered, putting his back to the countertop.

"I was talking to him last night," she said, stirring the pot vigorously, and lifting the lid on a second pot that seemed to contain extremely gloopy rice.

Mitchell groaned inwardly at the sight of it, hoping he wasn't going to be forced to eat it. "What was he saying?"

"What do you think," she said. "Nina this, Nina that."

"Oh. I saw her today."

"Who, Nina? George said she was avoiding him."

"She is," Mitchell confirmed. "She's been avoiding me too. But I pinned her down."

"So what's her problem?" Nina turned away from the cooker towards him. "Is she honestly freaked out by him being a werewolf, 'cause he thinks that's not it."

"Does he?" Mitchell looked surprised. "Well he's right, there is more to it than that."

"What then?"

Mitchell looked shifty. "I'm not sure I should tell you," he said.

"Oh, come on Mitchell!" she complained. "It's much easier for me if I know what's going on, I'm always the last to find out about anything around here."

"Is he in?" the vampire asked, moving so that he could look out the door into the living room.

"No, he's not back yet," she said. "Mitchell what is it?"

"Okay," he said. "George doesn't know this yet, so you can't tell him. You can't, okay Annie."

"What is it?" she insisted.

Mitchell steeled himself, still not sure he should be telling her, but it was such a huge piece of news, such a bombshell, that he wanted to tell someone. And it wasn't like he could tell George. "That night," he said. "In the room with Herrick. When Nina rushed in and George pushed her away, he – scratched her."

"Oh my God!" Annie was genuinely shocked. "Oh my God!! Does he not know?"

Mitchell shrugged. "He's no idea."

"And does that mean that she's…?" he nodded. "And she knows that she's…?" he nodded again. "Oh my God! So why did she break up with him? Is she angry at him?"

"No, just the opposite," he said. "She doesn't want him to find out. She thinks he'll take it badly, which he – will."

"But she can't keep that a secret Mitchell. She's got to tell him."

"I know, that's what I said."

"So what's she going to do?"

"I don't know," he said, then opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped at the sound of a key in the front door.

They both looked at each other, Mitchell miming 'not a word' to Annie, and she scurried back to the cooker as they heard George open the door and come in.

"Hello," he said, walking in to the kitchen.

"Hiya," Annie said, looking over her shoulder in what she hoped was a casual way.

"What's that?" Mitchell asked, as George was carrying an over-sized hard back book in his hands.

"The Mysteries of Death and Portals to Another World," he read out, holding it up.

"Sounds like a fun read," Mitchell commented.

"Oh, it's not for me," George protested. "It's for her."

"Is that the book?" Annie turned excited, for the moment forgetting about her conversation with Mitchell. She came over and took it from George, quickly opening it to scan the pages.

"It is indeed, all two thousand seven hundred and eighty three pages of it. At least it'll give you something to do for the rest of eternity." He wandered past them to the cooker. "What an earth is going on here?"

"Annie's cooking," Mitchell explained.

George picked up a wooden spoon and took a cautious taste at the gloop in the pot. He made a face. "Yes," he said, putting the spoon down quickly. "Well isn't that nice."

"You in or out this evening?" Mitchell asked.

"In," he said gloomily. "Why, do you have a plan?"

"I was going to watch something later. Something comic possibly if you're up for it."

"Maybe," George took off his glasses and scrubbed his eyes. "It's been a long day though. I'm gonna take a shower." He made for the door. "Happy reading," he said to Annie as he passed her.

"Yeah – oh and thanks," she said, distracted by the book, but grateful none the less.

"You really think there's gonna be something in there that can help?" Mitchell asked her.

"Well I won't know that until I've read it, will I," she pointed out, her eyes riveted to the page, her cooking on the stove forgotten.

"True," Mitchell said, his eyes following George as he disappeared up the stairs. Then he crossed to the fridge and helped himself to a beer.

Life got into a bit of a holding pattern for the three housemates over the next few days. George was moody, up in the night, dragging himself around in a depressed funk that no one could break him out of. Mitchell didn't know what to do, burdened with the knowledge he had, and knowing that the only way out of this for all of them was for Nina to tell the truth. But she was avoiding him again, and he hadn't had another chance to talk to her.

Annie just buried herself in her new book, and Mitchell would now regularly come down into the living room to find both of them on the couch: him sitting there staring into nothing, and her reading, sometimes with her booted feet on his lap. It was like he didn't notice. Like he'd stopped caring if people used him as a foot rest or not.

But the day that Nina came to tell him, it just so happened that he was there on his own. Annie had gone to the library herself this time to do some research, and Mitchell was out somewhere. George didn't know where.

When the knock on the door came, he pulled himself slowly to his feet, and made his way over, pausing as he recognized the shape of her on the other side, and for a moment, at a loss for what to do. He looked down at his shoes and took a breath. Well, whatever it was she was here for, it couldn't be worse than what she'd already said to him.

He took a deep breath, reached up and opened the door.

Nina stood on the other side, hands in her pockets and looking awkward. A half smile of welcome flicked across her face as he came into view, though he'd only opened the door partway, shielding his body with it.

"Hey," she said.

"Hi."

She opened her mouth, then shut it again. He could see this was difficult for her, but he wasn't in the mood to make it any easier.

"Can I – uh – can I come in?" she asked, realizing that he wasn't going to give anything away in this exchange, and that she was going to have to do all the work. That was fine. It was fair.

George seemed to consider the request for a few seconds, then pulled the door open more fully and stepped away to let her in. Once she was inside, he closed it after her.

They stood, awkward.

"Look, Nina…" George began.

But she cut him off, holding up a hand. "Can I – talk," she said.

He yielded the floor without a fight, and she crossed to the couch, slinging her bag off her shoulder and placing it there. Then she turned back, hands together.

"You see, the thing is," she began. "This is – going to be difficult."

He looked a bit confused at that, and came closer. "More difficult than what's already been said?" he asked, a little sarcastically. "More difficult than you watching me transform into beastman right in front of your eyes?"

"Well," she tilted her head slightly. "Possibly, yes."

"Oh."

"But," she went on quickly. "I don't want you to freak out at all, okay, this is tough, it's – it's difficult, but if I can just get through it then we can see where we are."

George took that all in, as anyone might. "Alright."

"You see the thing is," she said again. "I don't actually want to stop being your girlfriend."

A little bit of hope, a sliver, like the first light that creeps through the clouds at dawn, entered George's heart.

"It's – I - like you, a lot, I – love you even," she went on.

"And I love you," he put in with feeling. "Nina, I really do."

"I know that," she said, then turned away at the sight of his face, scared that she'd lose her nerve. "But, all the things that have happened, they're huge, they've big, really big, big things, and it's taken me a little while to work through everything. So really I said that I wanted to break up with you to give me a breathing space more than anything else. And I was scared that if I didn't do that, then I'd never be able to get it all into my head and work through it properly, and I didn't want to – worry you with stuff like that, so I just said we should break up. You see?" she turned back to him.

His eyes were watering with emotion. It broke her heart.

"Oh, George," she went up to him, to his chest, and spoke without raising her eyes. Which meant she was basically speaking to his throat. And as she spoke, her hands toyed with the front of his chequed shirt. "You are the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. A long time. And I knew all along that you had this dark secret that you couldn't share with me. And it was my choice to ignore that, and to stay with you, because I wanted to."

She looked up into his eyes. "I want to be with you, whatever you are. But we need to be completely honest with each other, that's my one condition."

"Yes," he nodded sincerely. "I promise, I will never hide anything from you, ever again, Nina. I just – want us to be happy, to be really happy."

"But," she said, turning away again, and putting a hand to her head as she got to the difficult part of the conversation. "That means I have to be honest with you."

"What do you mean?" he said.

"Well." She paced a little bit. "There's something that I really need to tell you," she eventually confessed. "It's maybe something I should have told you straight away, but like everything else I needed to think about it, and go over it, and I think I need to tell you, and certainly if we're – going to go on like we were before, then I really do need to tell you, because there's no way we could be doing stuff like we did before without you finding out anyway."

"Nina, whatever it is," he said, coming forward and stopping her nervous speech. "I'll understand - Jesus, it can't be worse than what I was keeping from you, and you're saying that you accept that. I'd accept anything about you. Anything. Please just tell me."

"Okay," she said, feeling her blood pounding with fear and anticipation. "Okay." She stepped a pace away from him, and put a hand to her sleeve. He followed her action with his eyes, ignorant and innocent of what was happening. Then she pulled the sleeve up.

There was a gap of maybe 6 seconds when he didn't seem to realize what she was showing him. And then he got it.

It was actually like a physical blow. She watched his face crumple as he stepped away from her, making an almost involuntary movement with his right hand towards his left shoulder, where the scar that had made him still marked his flesh. The mirror scar to hers. He went pale, so pale she thought he might faint.

He moaned, the emotion already building, his anguish rising to the surface like pasta on the boil. "You're – Nina I'm so…"

"George, it's okay," she insisted, dropping her sleeve and coming towards him, but he backed away, as if he feared what else he might do to her if she got too close. Her own eyes filled with tears. "George, please," she begged. "It was an accident."

"It shouldn't have happened!" he screamed suddenly. "You should never have been involved with any of this!"

"But I wanted to be!" she shouted back. "This is my fault, George. You tried to keep me away from it all, but I'm the one that came after you, I'm the one that rushed into that room. You did everything right."

"No!" he cried, holding up his hands. He was looking around for an escape, somewhere to run to where he could get away from this, leave it behind. But there was no where for him to go. He was already in his sanctuary, and however hard he had tried to keep it all separate, the horror had followed him home, and was taking up residence in the one place he thought he could be safe. He backed into the wall, and used its support to slump to the ground. "Don't touch me!" he screamed at her, as she came over to him. "I'm a – monster!"

Nina sat back on her heals, watching him, desperate to comfort him, but feeling a gulf growing between them. "George I love you," she insisted. "This doesn't change that."

"It changes everything!" he spat back. "You've no idea what it's like what it does to you, Nina. I've ruined your life and condemned you to…" he broke off, maybe realizing what he had condemned her to, imagining her enduring the pain that he went through once every 28 days, seeing her lost and alone in the woods, naked, afraid. Cursed. "No!" he screamed again, his sobs coming in waves, a paroxysm of sorrow and self-hatred that washed over him, and terrified her.

She didn't even hear the key in the door behind her, nor see it open, or Mitchell come into the room. Her attention was all on him.

"What the hell's going on?" his Irish tones in her ear was the first clue she had that Mitchell was standing right next to her. She whipped round.

"I told him," she said plainly.

"He took it well, I see," Mitchell said ironically, coming over, and looking down at his sobbing friend with obvious concern.

Nina turned back to her lover. "George," she said, trying to break through the anger and pain that had grown up around him. "George, it's done," she said firmly. "You can't undo it, you can't climb your way through the guilt and go back in time and make this like it didn't happen. We have to live it, both of us. It's a fact, a fixed point. I'm a werewolf now, just like you."

George raised his head at her words. His eyes were red and swollen, his nose running. He was drawing breath in little shuddering gasps.

But he looked at her, right at her. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.

She tried to smile through her own tears. "I know," she said, and moved in to hug him.

He allowed it, hugging back with violence almost, clinging to her desperately. Mitchell, embarrassed by the intensity of their emotion, left them to it, going into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.

Nina stroked George's hair tenderly. "It'll be alright," she soothed.

"How will it?" he gasped out. "How will it ever be alright?"

"I don't know," she smiled a little to herself. "I just – have this - feeling. That everything's going to be alright."


	3. Chapter 3

Annie joined Mitchell in the kitchen when she came home, carefully by-passing the living room, where major emotional chat was still going on, and she sat with him at the table, cold hands wrapped firmly round a cup of steaming tea.

George and Nina had moved to the couch just before she'd come in, but their conversation was every bit as intense as the portion that Mitchell had witnessed when they were on the floor. The two of them, the dead and the undead, were trying not to spy on the living occupants of the house, but it was pretty hard. Every so often, they could actually hear every word that was spoken, when their voices were raised in anger or in sorrow.

"How long have they been at it now?" she asked Mitchell, sneaking a side-long peak at the two werewolves. The sun had set since Nina arrived, and night was now well and truly settled in outside the house.

"About an hour," he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

"You think they're going to be okay?" she was referring to their status as a couple rather than their general health, but Mitchell got it without further explanation.

"I dunno," he said. "She's strong, she's really strong but – this is such as huge thing for them. I hope so. I think we both know that this road is easier to walk if you've got someone at your side. Maybe they just need more time."

"It's a good thing they're still talking," Annie said, gazing rather longingly at Mitchell as he raised his cup for another drink. She remembered drinking coffee: the slight buzz it gave her, the bitter taste of it, they way it clung to your mouth long after you'd swallowed it down.

"I think so," he agreed. "How did you get on at the library by the way?"

She made a face. "Pretty bust," she said. "I don't know what I expected. It's not like anyone who's alive can actually know about what happens after you die. So it's just all speculation and superstition. Lots of religious stuff about God and good and evil and all that rubbish."

"Yeah," Mitchell snorted. "If people only knew." He sat back with his arms crossed. "So are you going to keep at it?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe I just have to accept this. But it's just – forever Mitchell. For eternity. I can't even begin to think what that's going to be like. I'll see everyone I know grow old and die. I might see civilization grow old and die! I don't think I want to see that."

"Time is an incredible thing, Annie," he said, his eyes misting over slightly. "The things I've seen just in this past century, the changes that have come about. But they just happen, history happens around you. You just deal with it."

She smiled at him. "What was the best bit of the 20th century for you?"

"The best bit?" he said. "Oh, I don't know. The 20s were a lot of fun there for a while, people were so full of hope, but then it all came crashing down of course. And the 60s, well, there were so many changes going on. But do you know, I think the 90s really did it for me the most. Things really changed, they really picked up pace," he leaned forward eagerly. "It's actually exciting after a while watching it all happen, wondering what's going to change next, what incredible thing is going to be discovered."

"But do you not just get sick of it?" she wondered. "All that rubbish about war and conflict, seeing so many people die all the time."

He shrugged. "You know Josie told me, before she… she told me that being human meant being mortal. It meant dying. I didn't really understand what she meant at the time, but I think she meant that everything has its time and its place, and once that's over, then it's over, y'know. A life shouldn't be mourned."

"Even when it's unfulfilled," Annie said. "Even when it's cut short?"

He smiled at her sympathetically, knowing that she was referring to herself. "Life is life Annie. And death is death. In many ways, even though you're dead, you're still alive, you're still participating. Even if taking revenge on Owen was your big unresolved issue and you should have gone then, think what you can still do, the influence you can have on people, the positive effect you can have. Look at the effect you have on me and George. I can't think of this house without you here."

She returned the smile, deeply appreciative. And turned her head slightly at the sound of voices coming closer to the kitchen. Then they heard the sounds of farewells being made, and the front door closing.

"Guess they're through," she said quietly.

"Mm," Mitchell agreed, looking up as George wandered his way into the kitchen.

He stood there, face still rather red and swollen, his glasses held awkwardly in his hands. He was looking down at them rather than his friends, and seemed at a loss for what to do.

Annie stood up and went over to him, and wrapped him in a spontaneous embrace, that, although he didn't reject, he didn't seem to fully enjoy.

She pulled back and tried to look him in the face, but he still wasn't raising his eyes from his hands.

"I'm making a cup of tea," she said, a little provocatively. "Would you like one?"

He nodded, and she smiled, moving away and crossing to the kettle. George just remained standing there looking genuinely lost.

Then he said: "We need a little risk in our lives."

"What?" Both Annie and Mitchell spoke almost in unison, neither one understanding what he had meant.

"You said that to me," George went on, indicating Mitchell. "You said we needed risk in our lives. And this is what happens."

"George…"

"You pushed us together," he went on, ignoring the interruption. "You invited her here, brought her into this, brought this semblance of normality, this fake sheen of life and love and relationships – and I told you that I didn't think it was safe. None of it. Not having people here, not involving Nina, none of it."

"George you can't stop living," Mitchell insisted.

"I've destroyed her life!" he raised his voice emotionally.

"She wants to be with you. She's forgiven you for what happened."

"She's no idea what happened," he shouted. "She has no conception of any sort at all of what this is, of what she is, of what I've done to her."

"Then she'll learn," Mitchell said, getting to his feet. "We all learned."

George put his head slightly to one side. "I didn't want this for her."

Mitchell softened. "No one did," he said. "But it's happened now. And we have to move forward."

"We can't change what we are, George," Annie put in from her spot beside the kettle, which had just come through the boil.

"I'm not asking anyone to change," he said pointedly. "I'm just – there are things that have – things that should never have happened."

"What would you have done different?" Mitchell asked him. "From everything that's happened, what could you have done different?"

"I could have kept her out of this," he said.

"By denying yourself happiness?"

"I don't deserve happiness!" he yelled. Then stopped and seemed to pull himself back from the brink of whatever black hole he was staring down. The other two looked at him, shocked, unable to think what to say. "Please try to understand," he said softly, aware of just how emotional he was, and how that looked. "I love Nina, but in bringing her into this, I have put my own feelings before her safety. And I don't know if I can forgive myself for that."

Before either Annie or Mitchell could answer him, he turned on his heel and left the kitchen. Annie hadn't even started making the tea she had promised him. The way she was feeling, she didn't feel particularly motivated to ever make tea again.

"Should we…?" she asked, pointing after him.

"No, leave him," Mitchell said, holding up a hand to stop her. "Obviously whatever Nina was saying to him for an hour wasn't enough to convince him. I can't think that anything we would say is going to make a difference. Just let him be for the time being. Let's see how he's doing in the morning."

Mitchell and Annie stayed up talking until they ran out words. Occasionally they could hear George moving around upstairs, but he didn't come down again, not for food, not for company. It was almost as if he'd checked out of the household for the evening, like he'd annexed his little room, gnomes and all.

"Have you heard anything more from Owen?" Mitchell asked Annie, sometime around 10 o clock, when they'd reached that time where there didn't seem to be much point in doing anything else with the evening other that what they were already doing. Mitchell was busy hoovering up a large plate of toast and jam, his second that hour.

The ghost shook her head. "Not a peep," she said. "I went round to his house the other day. Not to haunt him," she clarified quickly as Mitchell looked disapproving. "Not even to talk to him really. I just wanted to see him. See what he was doing."

"And what was he doing?"

She shrugged. "He wasn't there. Janie wasn't there either. The place was deserted. And it had that cold feeling to it," she said, screwing up her eyes a little. "You know, like no one's had the heating on. Like no one was living there."

He smiled. "You thought it was cold?"

"Well," she seemed a little flustered. "I could tell it was – it just seemed cold is all. I hung around for a bit, but no one came back."

"Maybe they've moved," Mitchell suggested.

"Probably," Annie agreed. "But if they have, they didn't bother to take much stuff with them."

"People don't when they're in a hurry," he said, speaking from experience. "He's taken her away, and they'll start a whole new life together somewhere else."

"Until he pushes her down the stairs," Annie dropped in.

"You did everything you could to help her," Mitchell pointed out. "You of all people know how manipulative Owen could be. It's no wonder that she chose to believe him over the supposed spirit of some dead girlfriend. Remember, you're not supposed to exist, Annie."

"Yeah. Ain't that the truth."

When he did finally go to bed (and Annie to her chair) Mitchell couldn't sleep. His mind was in overdrive. He kept wondering over and over how he'd allowed himself to get into this situation; him, the coolest of the cool, highly favoured, adored even among his peers. And what was he doing? Losing sleep over his werewolf housemate turning his girlfriend into a fellow lycanthrope. Talk about puppy love.

But truth be told, that wasn't why he couldn't shut his eyes and switch off his brain. Truth be told, he was thinking about all the people he'd turned over the years. Not just those he'd killed in dark doorways and dark rooms, screaming, pleading, silent. But the ones he'd brought into this world. The ones he'd made into monsters, like him.

How different he and George were. Here was a man who was terrified of spreading his 'condition', who did everything a person could possibly do to hide from the world and keep everyone at arm's length. Everything about him screamed 'keep away from me' from his clothes to his lifestyle. And here was Mitchell, who knew what he was, and had spent a hundred years spreading it to anyone he felt like. It was only now that he was desperate to get away from it and now he just felt like he didn't have anything like George's willpower.

He thought of Lauren, sweet Lauren. She'd been so nervous when she'd asked Mitchell over: the fear of rejection, the vulnerability. But she'd done it. And look at what happened. In her he'd created his worst nightmare. He'd turned a sweet girl into a killer, and then he'd destroyed her, literally, with his own hands.

Then he thought of Bernie.

That kid had had so much potential, so much going for him. And it had all just been fucked up by stupid, bloody society and it's fear of the unknown and of exposing children to anything, and of branding anyone who so much as sneezes at a child the wrong way, as evil and corrupting. Of course there were bad people in the world – until not so long ago, he'd been one of them – but he wasn't any more, and hurting or corrupting that child had been the furthest thing from his mind. Until he'd turned him into a vampire. Until he'd given him his own curse.

Mitchell squeezed his eyes together. Why had he done it? He was just a kid. Of course his mother was going to chose to keep him with her. Why had he even offered her that choice? He knew it was the wrong thing to do. But he'd been emotional. He'd felt guilty. He'd been afraid.

If anyone knew what George was going through, it was him.

Well, it was done now, no taking it back. He sighed and rolled over, opening his eyes and staring out into the darkness. And maybe it would be alright. Being a vampire didn't necessarily make you evil. You could survive without the blood and the killing, as long as there was someone there to help you. You didn't need to become a monster.

Then suddenly, Mitchell had this odd feeling that something wasn't quite right. It was a strange feeling, like when you look at a picture, and the perspective is all wrong. He sat up in bed and tried to focus, aware that his tired brain was jumping up and down trying to tell him something, and that he really needed to listen.

He was staring at his bed side table. It was something about that that wasn't right. Something was missing. Something was definitely not there that should be.

His alarm clock was there, the book he was reading, the lamp, the sunglasses, his radio, the pile of magazines. What was missing? What was it that his brain had spotted in the dim light that was so important?

And then he started, realization kicking in.

When Herrick had appeared outside their front door and staked him in the chest, narrowly missing his heart, George had been on-hand to take him to hospital. Of course, there wasn't much modern day medicine could do for a vampire. They healed quickly anyway, and once Josie had so lovingly given up her life so that he could regain his strength, the doctors had been more than happy to let him go home, secure in the knowledge that he was a medical marvel, and quite happy to not investigate the matter any further.

But what they had done was insist that he take medication home with him: pain killers that Mitchell insisted he neither wanted nor needed. But they'd been adamant: recovery would happen faster the less he was in pain. He'd eventually acquiesced. After all, the last thing he wanted to do at that point was bring even more attention to himself.

So they'd filled him a prescription, and given him the pills in a box in a little paper pharmaceutical bag, and told him to make an appointment with his GP to have it re-filled in about a week. It was an appointment that Mitchell hadn't made, he didn't even have a GP. But the pills had sat in their little paper bag on his bed side cabinet where Annie had put them when she'd helped him into bed after his return from the hospital. But they weren't there now. The bag and its contents were missing.

Mitchell practically leapt from the bed, a cold feeling of fear spreading unexpectedly through his stomach. He strode to the door and pulled it open and walked, bare foot, down the hall to George's room. He stood outside, listening. He could be wrong after all. Maybe Annie had moved the bag on one of her cleaning sprees. Maybe he'd moved it and just forgotten. It was possible.

But he was deluding himself. He knew exactly where those pills were, he just didn't want to go through that door and confirm his suspicions.

He screwed up his eyes, willing himself to be wrong, then he quietly and gently put his hand on the door knob, and turned it.

He opened the door as silently as he could manage, and stood there for a few seconds, feeling sick. Then he turned.

"Annie," he shouted, as loudly as he could. "Annie, call an ambulance."


	4. Chapter 4

After she'd left George, Nina had been wound up. She'd been expecting a difficult conversation, and her expectations had been extraordinarily well met. But she was still upset by the harsh reality of it all, and kept seeing his face and that look of horror as he realized what he'd done, and what she had become: what he had made her.

In some ways, she wished that she could have chosen another night to drop the bomb on him, as she was working, and had to leave rather than spending the evening, and then – if he'd been willing – staying over. Maybe it would have been too soon for all that anyway, but it didn't matter one way or the other. She couldn't delay telling him any longer.

She was feeling things changing somehow, changing inside her. Her perceptions of the world were altering, subtly but noticeably, and it was starting to frighten her. She'd told herself at first that it was just her imagination, but Mitchell's description of the wolf being inside George, and of everything getting sharper the closer they got to a full moon, started to make sense. And worst of all, she'd realized with shuddering clarity, that if she and George ran into each other anywhere, Mitchell was right, he was going to know. And that would have been worse, a hundred, a thousand times worse than her telling him straight out. At least this way, it came from her. Surely that made it a little bit better, didn't it? Better than him finding out by accident.

She had thought about leaving, considered it seriously, but life was just too complicated for that. Everything that made her her, was in Bristol now. If she left, she had no where to go, no support, no friends, no job, no nothing, and she didn't think she could take that on top of everything else. She didn't know how George had done it, and thought how the decision must have fractured him, maybe even more so than splitting himself into a beast once a month. Who we are is defined as much by the lives we create around ourselves as what we carry inside. Remove the normal and the everyday, our homes, our books, our neighbours, our loved ones, the mug we drink our morning coffee from, and are we the same person?

And she liked Nina: she wanted to be Nina. Wolf Nina, okay she could cope with that – probably – but Nina the littlest Hobo?

She had to stay.

And that meant she had to tell George.

They'd spent so long talking about it all, that she was actually late for her shift, and because of that, and the nature of the conversation (which although it had gone okay, hadn't exactly showered anyone in glory) and the fact that she hated graveyard shifts anyway, she was in a bad mood. But she sucked it up.

Night or day anyway, it didn't make much of a difference to her job. At least at night, most of the patients had the common decency to go to sleep, allowing her to get more of the paperwork done.

But that night, she wasn't going to get much done at all, and she'd really only just started when someone told her that Sasha was on the phone for her from A&E.

She took the handset that was offered.

"Hey Sash," she said, sighing inside, and trying to force herself back into the box of her old life. " I didn't know you were down there tonight."

"Yeah, um, Nina – we've just…" there was a commotion behind her, and Nina could here the usual buzz and noise of the hospital's busiest department.

"Sasha, you there?"

"Yeah. Nina. Your boyfriend's just been brought in."

Everything went numb. "What?"

"George. Paramedics just brought him in."

"Well, what's wrong with him?" Her friend didn't answer straight away, and she felt her anger rising. "Sasha? What's wrong with him?"

"It's a suspected OD," she said finally.

"I'm on my way down," Nina said instantly, and hung up the phone. She shouted to her colleague that she was needed down in Accident and Emergency, and left at a sprint, jogging to the lifts, standing hand on hips as they took an age to get to her, toying with her hair, nearly pulling it out in frustration at their slowness. She wove her way through the corridors, sometimes striding, sometimes trotting, going over the possibilities and the medical problems in her head. He'd be okay, as long as they got to him in time, he'd be okay. As long as they got to him in time, and he hadn't taken anything too bad, he'd be okay.

She caught sight of Mitchell and that ghost girl, Annie, sitting in chairs in the waiting area.

"Mitchell," she called loudly. He got to his feet. "What the hell happened?" she reached them, breathless but resolute.

"I don't know," he protested.

"Well, who found him?" she demanded angrily.

"I did," he admitted. "Some of my pills went missing, and I just worked it out. He was pretty down after you'd left – but I never thought for a minute, that he'd…"

"What did he take?"

"What?"

"What pills were missing?" she asked irately.

"Oh I – I dunno. They were just some pain pills they'd given me after I was stabbed. I never took them. There weren't that many, but he took other stuff as well. We found packets in his room."

"Okay," she said. "I'm going to find out what's going on."

She walked past them, striding towards the curtained off intensive care unit, the unmistakable warning alarms of the medical machinery striking fear into her before the bed and her boyfriend even came into view. She practically ran the last few feet and swept round to where all the action was taking place. It was a hive of activity: the heart monitor above the bed showing a clear v-fib flatline, Angela, one of the A&E nurses working a hand ventilator, a doctor, who she identified with a sinking feeling as Dr Newell, picking up panels from the crash cart beside the bed.

"Okay," he said. "Charging at 100, clear."

Everyone pulled their hands away quickly, and Nina flinched as he shocked George, his body convulsing with the electricity. Angela went back to the ventilator, another nurse felt for a pulse.

"Nothing," she said.

"Okay, give him another amp of atropine," Dr Newell said. "Again. Charged at 100. Clear!"

Nina felt the bile rise in her throat. It was too much to watch, and part of her knew that she shouldn't be here, knowing what she knew, knowing what they were injecting into the cannula fixed in his arm, knowing that arm as she did, every vein, every mole. Love and medicine didn't mix, not when it was brutal and physical, and beyond the every day experience that most people had, a few pills, some stitches maybe. Not invasive, not this close to death.

"I've got a femoral pulse," one of the nurses said. All eyes fixed on the heart monitor, and there it was, the beep, beep, beep you were always waiting for.

"Okay, he's still bradycardic," Dr Newell said. "Push 10 of Naloxone, let's do a gastric lavage, and wait for the tox screen to come back." He turned and saw Nina standing there. "You most definitely should not be in here."

"What did he take?" Nina demanded, as her friend Sasha spotted her too and came over from where she'd been helping to cut George's clothes off. She put her hand on her arm.

"Did you hear me just say we didn't have the tox screen?" Dr Newell said aggressively.

"But you must have some idea," she pleaded, desperate to know how bad this was going to get, and if the night had a whiff of mortality to it.

"I will find you and tell you when I know more, but for the moment he is doing okay, and I don't want you in here."

"His heart's not beating properly!" she shot back. "How can you stand there and tell me that he's doing okay!"

"Nina," the doctor pointed. "Out."

Sasha dragged her away.

As soon as they were outside the curtains, Nina pulled her arm away roughly. "Damn it!" she exclaimed softly, frustrated, scared, angry, all in an instant.

"Are you alright?" Sasha asked worriedly.

"Patently not," she shot back, walking away, her mind swirling with intense emotions that were incredibly raw and immediate. She actually had to fight strongly against the urge to punch a hole in the wall. What was happening to her - apart from the fact that she'd just found out her boyfriend was a werewolf, that he'd turned her into a werewolf, and that now he'd tried to kill himself, of course? Was this anger something else that she had to look forward to every month?

"How is he?" Mitchell asked, leaping out of his chair the moment Nina came back into view.

"Uh," she put her hand to her forehead, trying to get a hold of herself. "He's not great," she hedged. "They just had to resuscitate him."

"What?" Mitchell asked incredulously.

"His heart stopped," Nina confirmed. "Just for a short while it looks like. But it's beating again, and they're treating him."

"What do they do?" Annie asked from Mitchell's elbow. She had a wide-eyed look about her that Nina wanted to hit.

"Uh, they'll give him drugs to counteract the overdose, flush his stomach out and give him charcoal to absorb anything that hasn't gone into his system yet. But they still don't know exactly what he's taken, so it's all about waiting now to see what happens. Which is just great."

She flung herself into a chair, exuding fury.

The other two huddled a little distance from her, talking quietly. The next time she looked up, Annie was gone, and it was only Mitchell there, not looking at her, standing tense and dark in the bleak hospital lighting.

They didn't say much to each other in the half an hour in took for Dr Newell to make an appearance. He came straight up to Nina and handed her a piece of paper flapping from a cheap plastic clipboard.

She snatched it from him, and read it immediately, absorbing the technical data in a few seconds.

"But…" she looked up, confused. "There's nothing here that should have caused his heart to stop. He's got," she looked back down. "Tiny quantities of – well sizable quantities of that," she pointed. "But not enough to cause an MI. What's going on?"

"Oh, I get to be the doctor now, do I?" Newell said, arrogantly.

"Excuse me," Mitchell interrupted from beside him. "Our friend just tried to kill himself. Do you think you could be a little bit more of a – " he was trying to think of a Yiddish word that he'd heard George use once, melsh was it, mince. Ah hell, it meant being a person, it was perfect word, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember what it was. "Human," he finished, decisively.

Newell glanced at him, unmoved. "We don't know why his heart stopped," he admitted. "And without knowing his full medical history, it's hard to guess why it happened, but if I had to put money on it, I'd say he had some underlying congenital condition, possibly a genetic weakness, or perhaps the heart muscle has been damaged at some point, maybe by a virus. Combined with the systemic shock of the overdose, it was just too much for him. But he's responding well to treatment, and we'll keep him in for observation for several days. We'll run some more tests while he's here to see if we can find out what's going on. He'll also need to talk to a psychologist."

"Okay," Nina said. "Can we see him?"

"He's still unconscious at the moment," the doctor said. "But you can see him."

Nina and Mitchell just stood there for a few seconds staring down at the bed. George had an oxygen mask fixed over his face, black smudges from what Nina recognized as charcoal, still marking his mouth and chin. The heart monitor stood at his bedside, beeping steadily, now showing a good rhythm.

Nina picked up his chart for a quick read, but she wasn't concentrating. Placing it back on the bed, she crossed to his side and stood there, watching him breathe. She was shaking her head.

"You fucking idiot," she muttered angrily.

"Nina," Mitchell started to say. "You don't understand…"

"Don't tell me that I don't understand!" she yelled, turning on him, ferocious and wild. He was taken aback. "Just because you see me standing here being human while you're… you're whatever you are, don't presume that your problems are any worse than mine. You and your vampire angst, and him and his werewolf angst," she flung her arm in George's direction. "You don't know what it's like to be human, to be faced with problems every day and worse, knowing that you're not special in any way, you're just part of the world population, part of the furniture. And it's awful. And I can assure you that however dark your past, however many awful things you've seen and done, I've had things done to me, by people, Mitchell, that would make your skin crawl, things that I can never get over however much I try. So don't stand there and try to convince me that this – this," she emphasized, pointing at the bed. "Is an option. This is not an option. It is not an answer. This isn't even an ending. This is just shit!"

She calmed herself quickly, putting her hands on her hips and stepping away from the bed for a minute or so. He could see her steadying her breathing, willing herself to calm down.

"Sorry," she apologized, coming back. "I'm just – this is new for me."

He nodded without answering, recognizing the anger that bubbled out of George once a month. She took the opportunity to go back to George's bedside, though this time, she approached him more tenderly. His left arm had a cannula attached to a drip, and the middle finger of his left hand sported a pulse-ox sensor. So she took his right, unattached, hand and leant down towards him.

"You're still an idiot," she muttered, as Mitchell brought a chair up behind her so that she could sit down. She stared at George's face, peaceful, still. "God, why did he do it? We talked about everything, I thought we'd talked it out. There was no reason for this."

"He thinks he's ruined your life, Nina," Mitchell said, coming to stand on the other side of the bed.

She glanced up at him. "You're the one who thought this was a good idea," she said sardonically.

"I thought he'd take it hard," Mitchell conceded. "I didn't think he'd take it this hard. I didn't think he'd do this. He's always endured it, everything that's happened to him. The guilt must have gotten too much. He must have thought this was the only way to escape it."

Nina scrubbed at her forehead and sighed. "I don't know what to do," she admitted. "I don't know how to get him past this. How I can let him see that it's not the end of everything."

"It's just going to take time," Mitchell said. "Time's the only thing that heals something like this. All we've got to do is try to keep him alive to get to that point."

"Well, he's not very good at killing himself. That's a mercy," she said. "Whatever he took, it was barely enough to do himself an injury. But what on earth caused his heart to stop I wonder," she said, stroking his hair.

"Having a heart attack once a month for three years probably can't be that good for you," Mitchell pointed out. "Maybe it's weakened him."

She stopped stroking George and looked up. "What?"

"When he transforms into a werewolf, his heart stops, he has a heart attack. Multiple organ failure. I don't suppose anyone's ever done any medical studies into it, but it can't be good for your health in the long run."

"His heart stops," Nina looked incredulous.

"Mm," he nodded.

"Jesus. Is there anything about this that's good?"

"Not much."

"Look," she went back to stroking George's hair. "Mitchell, I'm good here for the moment. Why don't you – go get some coffee or something. I'll come and find you if anything changes."

"Alright." If nothing else, Mitchell knew when he wasn't wanted. He glanced at the clock. It was almost three. "I'll be outside if you need me."

Nina nodded, not looking up. The only person she needed was lying in front of her. And he wasn't going anywhere.


	5. Chapter 5

When George became aware of the world once more, the first thing he heard was a sound that 14 months of working in a hospital readily helped him to identify as a heart monitor. It beeped in what his un-medically trained and still relatively sleepy mind considered to be a pretty healthy pattern; not too fast, not too slow, just relentless. What you wanted from a heart really: a relentless beat. It was when it stopped being relentless that problems usually arose.

While his brain tried to sort itself out, he wondered where he could be. He must have fallen asleep somewhere in the hospital, which was a bit odd. He never, or very rarely fell asleep away from his own bed (or someone else's bed for that matter.) It didn't matter how tired he got, it was just that idea of falling asleep in public that he didn't like.

But then again, there had been that night with Mitchell, he'd woken up to find the minister looming over his friend in what he'd assumed had been an ominous posture. He'd fallen asleep then, though it had actually been nighttime.

Maybe he had a hangover? He certainly felt rough enough, like he'd eaten a few bad curries and drunk a few too many beers. Not that he drank beer, but if he did, and he drank too much, he was pretty sure this is what it would feel like.

Hangover. At work.

Seemed unlikely.

His other senses were slowly kicking in now, and he smelt the sharp tang of antiseptic, as well as that slight whiff of pee that always seems to permeate hospitals, no matter how clean they are. He also felt the rough feeling of overly-boiled sheets beneath his finger tips, on his belly, resting on his toes, hard and scratchy. That was odd, as was the dry, cold feeling in his nose and throat. Was he in bed in the hospital? Had something happened to him?

He opened his eyes, slowly, letting them adjust to the bright light around him. Definitely in bed. That was a hospital ceiling, no doubt about it, and hospital sheets, and hospital wires attached to his naked chest with little sticky buttons. They led off into the machine that was giving off the beeping sound. The heart monitor, monitoring his heart.

He looked round, confused, and with a growing, sickening feeling of dread. What the hell had happened?

He was expecting to see someone sitting next to the bed when he turned, that was only natural. Mitchell probably, or Nina, or Annie, or even his mother called from her London home to sit by him in his hour of need. Unlikely, but when you were in his type of situation, your head did sometimes run away with itself.

But no, it was none of them. It was Mark the hospital chaplain, the same man who he'd woken to see hovering over Mitchell, and who he'd gone to in need before assuming the responsibility of destroying Herrick.

He shut his eyes briefly, as they flashed up an image, a bloody body on the floor, intestines torn out, head missing, limbs ripped and chewed. But he opened them again quickly as he realized the image was worse behind black eyelids.

"George?"

The minister's voice was soft, full of concern, and with no hint at all of the light and ready sarcasm that George had become so familiar with from their brief conversations together. He was leaning forward in his chair, looking at him, his eyes searching.

George wasn't sure he wanted to speak, but opened his mouth for the attempt anyway.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. His throat was sore, and he glanced around for some water. But there wasn't any.

"I wanted to make sure you were alright, and give your friends a rest," he said.

George screwed up his face questioningly. "My friends?"

"Mitchell, and the girl, the one who works here, the nurse? They've been here all night. I sent them away to get some breakfast, but they should be back soon."

Mitchell and Nina.

His eyes widened. He remembered.

He tried to sit up. "I shouldn't be here," he said, grimacing at the pain he encountered in his chest, and constrained by the wires attached to him.

The minister got up and moved quickly to the bedside. "George," he said. "Just calm down. You'll be alright."

"No, you don't understand. I shouldn't be here," he insisted, trying to pull the sensors off his chest, the nasal cannula giving him oxygen off his face.

"George," the minister had his hands on his chest, shoving him back. "Don't…"

"I should be dead," he said, trying to push him off. "I wanted to be dead."

"God wanted you alive," the minister countered.

George stopped struggling, staring at him emotionally. "God abandoned me," he articulated. "He abandoned me, he abandoned Nina. He abandoned all of us."

The minister just held him for a second, hands on his shoulders, feeling his rough scar under his fingers. "I know," he said, glancing down, not wanting to meet the pain in George's eyes. "That whatever you've gone through – it's something terrible. And I know that the life you live is dark, somehow, in a way I don't understand, in a way that you won't explain to me. But however dark it is, there is always hope. You have to believe that."

"I – killed someone," George whispered in his ear.

Mark drew back, horrified, looking him in the face once more.

"I ripped him apart," George was looking almost feral, so unlike the gentle man he'd first encountered. " I tore him to pieces. Is that enough darkness for you? Is that enough for God to reject me?"

"George…"

"I infected my girlfriend," George went on. "With something she can never recover from. With something that will make her like me – make her want to kill, and maim and destroy everything she's sees and comes into contact with." He was getting more emotional by the second. "I'm a monster. I don't deserve hope."

Mark didn't know what to say.

Now that he was unrestrained, George went back to removing the medical paraphernalia that was attached to his body, taking off the oxygen, and the pulse-ox sensor, and pulling off the sticky pads attached to his chest. Every time something came off, another alarm sounded from the monitor stationed next to the bed, shrill and discordant. Then, above the others, a louder alarm suddenly rang out.

George looked up, shocked. Mark had pulled the room's emergency cord.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking contrite. "You need to be taken care of. You're not well."

George opened his mouth to respond, but the door bust open before he could say a word, and instantly, the room seemed to fill with people.

"Alright," said the nurse who'd come in first. He vaguely recognized her, but didn't know her name. "George you need to keep those on, my love."

Mark took the opportunity and the distraction as an excuse to slip out. He hadn't expected his visit to be quite so covered in horror in such a short period of time. But something about George had been bothering him since their first encounter, a soul that needed help, a fellow human being who needed love and care and attention. Maybe he shouldn't have been the one to provide it, but his curiosity and his natural empathy for others had kicked in, and now he'd started on this quest, he certainly wasn't going to let a little darkness stop him.

"What the hell's going on?"

Mark turned at the voice, and saw George's friend, Mitchell, the one who'd been stabbed in the chest only a few weeks before, and was now looking really quite amazingly fit and well and healthy, striding down the corridor towards him. He moved in the direction of the door, but seemed to flinch away from Mark, as if something was stopping him from getting closer.

"George woke up," Mark said. "He was quite agitated and tried to get out of bed. They're re-settling him now."

"Oh, I see," Mitchell looked through the port hole windows on the door, but made no further attempt to go in. "At least he woke up."

"I'm Mark by the way," he said, holding out a hand. "I don't think we've met formally."

Mitchell turned and looked, rather uncomfortably, at the hand. "I won't, if you don't mind," he said, holding up his own hand. "Uh – hospital germs and all that."

"Oh, right," Mark said uncertainly.

"So you're the hospital chaplain?" Mitchell asked, taking a slug of the coffee he was holding, and very pointedly keeping a distance.

"That's right."

"Cool," he said.

"I met George when he was here with you," he said. "When you were hurt."

"Oh.

"You don't remember?"

Mitchell shook his head. "No, I was pretty out of it."

"The hospital called me in," Mark went on explaining. "It's standard procedure when something like that happens."

"I'm amazed there's anything like a standard procedure for when something like that happens!" Mitchell commented dryly.

"Well, not that exactly, it's not written into the hospital charter that the chaplain gets called whenever one of the cleaners gets stabbed in the chest and then has a miraculous recovery."

"Right," Mitchell said slowly, unsure where this was going.

"They just thought that - you might need support."

"And so you sat with George while you were here that night? You talked to him?"

"Yes, well, of course it turned out you both needed more than just moral support."

"What do you mean?"

The chaplain looked up and down the corridor, but apart from a nurse walking away down the far end, they were alone. Still, he lowered his voice. "Men came, in the night, while you were here. They came for you. George stood up to them. He was incredible actually, I ended up losing my dinner over the affair."

Mitchell's eyes narrowed and he took a step closer, nodding slightly. "I remember them coming," he said. "But not what happened. You were there?" The chaplain nodded. "You saw the men that were coming for me?"

Mark looked unsure. He had nightmares about those men, their faces clear in his mind. "I – saw them," he admitted. "They weren't – right, they weren't of this world somehow. They felt…"

"What?" Mitchell prompted.

"Evil," he said finally. "George wouldn't tell me what they were. He told me they were just bad men." Then he looked at Mitchell curiously. "Their darkness is on you as well," he said. "There is a darkness over all of this."

Mitchell nodded slightly. "If I were you, I'd walk away now," he said. "Before you find out any more." He turned back to the room, but through the window, he could see the nurses still fussing with George, still trying to get all the bits and pieces re-attached to him, arguing with him.

"He said he killed someone," the chaplain said suddenly from behind him.

Mitchell closed his eyes, feeling something sink inside of him. Was this it? Was this where it all fell apart?

"Ripped them apart," the chaplain went on.

The vampire turned, trying not to flinch at the minister in front of him. He was looking expectant, and horrified, all in the same expression.

"I can't believe it," he said. "Not of him."

"Then don't," Mitchell said.

He looked at Mitchell seriously. "Is it true?"

Mitchell considered him, and decided that the potential consequences here of telling him a lie, were worse than the consequences of telling him a truth. Or a half truth anyway. "No," he said. "Not someone. He killed some thing, but it wasn't a person, it wasn't human. Does that tell you enough?"

"Before all this happened," he said. "It wouldn't have. But now… I don't know."

"Walk away," Mitchell said again. "You don't want any part of this, believe me. And once you start on the road, you won't be able to go back."

"But I want to help him," he insisted. "He wants to die."

"Yeah, the suicide thing did kinda give it away," Mitchell said sarcastically.

"I can help," Mark insisted. "Doing this job, I've counseled so many people on dying and death, I don't want to abandon George just because this is too hard. I'm part of this now, and I don't want to let it drop."

Mitchell considered him. The whole vampire, werewolf thing, the whole otherworld thing that he existed in, that George existed in, that Annie existed in, it wasn't like it was a secret. They didn't walk in plain sight of everyone, they didn't tell everyone they met what they were, but it wasn't like there was some rule written down that people couldn't find out. He'd dated humans, he'd been friends with humans. Sometimes he'd told them, sometimes he hadn't, but it was a judgment thing more than anything else. It had to do with trust.

But this was a minister. Was that right? Would he accept it? He did after all have a power over vampires if he chose to use it. A power that Mitchell didn't completely understand.

He looked down the corridor, and jerked his head to imply that the chaplain followed him as he set off towards a small waiting area for families. He went inside, flicking the lights on, and wincing as the fluorescent tubes clicked into life above them.

Mark followed him in and shut the door, his face unreadable.

"Okay," Mitchell said, turning. "What I'm about to tell you is something that no one knows, or very few people know anyway. It puts us all at risk you knowing, but now that you're onto it, you'll figure it out in the end anyway, and might well put yourself in danger while you're doing so. So here's the thing. Believe me when I say that if you betray us in any way…"

The chaplain held up his hand. "I have no interest in getting anyone in trouble," he said.

"Yes, and as much as I'd like to believe you…"

"Hand to God," the chaplain said, noting as Mitchell winced at his words. "I will not betray you. Hopefully that means you won't need to finish that threat you were about to make."

"Well," Mitchell said, a bit thrown off. "Yeah, okay. The thing is, those men that came for me that night, the ones you saw. They weren't just bad men. They were – "

"Vampires," Mark interrupted.

Mitchell looked surprised at the word. "Well, yeah." He admitted.

Mark nodded vigorously. It was as though he'd known what they were, he'd known all along, but that hadn't made them real until someone confirmed it. Now they were real. Now there were monsters.

He moved, pacing a little bit to get over the shock. "Okay," he said. "Okay. And you are…"

Mitchell made little uncomfortable movements with his head. "Yeah."

"Okay," he paced some more. "And George is?"

"Something different," Mitchell said.

"Okay. So there are other things, than vampires."

"Yeah, there are other things than vampires."

"And what's George?"

"A werewolf."

"Alright, so there are werewolves. Vampires and werewolves."

"Yeah."

"And George is one."

"Yeah."

"And I'm guessing the person or the thing, as you put it, he killed was a – "

"Another vampire," Mitchell confirmed.

"Right." He was still pacing. "And the thing with his girlfriend?"

"He told you about that?"

"He mentioned he'd infected her with – something…"

"He scratched her. She's a werewolf now too."

"O – kay."

"It was an accident."

"And that's why he…"

"Tried to kill himself? Yeah I would guess."

"Okay, that's all starting to make sense."

"You – alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely."

"Want to throw up again?"

"A little bit."

"Okay. So that's the big secret."

"I – can see why.

"Still want to help George?"

He stopped pacing, and turned to face the vampire, decisive. "More than ever."

"Alright then." Mitchell looked at him, trying to read his face and what was going to happen next.

"Do I – take him biscuits?"

Mitchell's face screwed up, slightly horrified by the unexpected joke. "Yeah, I'd stay away from comments like that," he said, and walked past him out the room.

"Okay," Mark muttered, left alone and looking at the wall. "Okay." He wondered if he really was going to throw up, and took a few deep breaths to counter the feeling. Vampires and werewolves. Well. This was new.

When he made it back out into the hall, he could see Mitchell back down at George's room, arguing with the petite nurse who he now suspected to be George's girlfriend. She looked angry, and Mitchell actually looked cowed, which Mark suspected was not a normal state for him. Well, he was a vampire.

The nurse said one final thing to him, then headed past him into George's room. Mark came up to stand beside him.

"Is that George's girlfriend by any chance?" he said.

Mitchell nodded, taking another sip of his coffee, which must have been cold by that point. "That's Nina."

"She didn't look very happy."

"She's – had a rough few days," he reminded him.

They both watched Nina through the window as she went up to George, who was now back to being alone in the room, the other nurses having left him, satisfied that he was going to behave and abstain from ripping off all his sensors once more.

"Does she know?"

"Know what?" Mitchell asked, confused by the question.

"That he's infected her?"

"Yeah. She knew right away. But he's only just found out. I think he took it harder than she did. But then again, he understands all the implications."

"Which are?" Mark wondered.

"It's – complicated," Mitchell said, turning away to look back through the window.

Nina was doing a 'what the hell was all that about' stance, and was probably saying something pretty similar. George was looking pointedly away from her, his eyes red.

"Yeah, I'm not sure shouting at him and trying to make him feel guilty is the best option right now," Mark said.

"You go in and tell her," Mitchell said, looking actually scared at the prospect.

"I'll give her a minute," Mark said, finding Mitchell's fear slightly infectious. "Maybe she's got a few things she needs to get off her chest."

"Words are not something that Nina's ever short of." Mitchell said, then he started fumbling in his pocket. "I need a fag," he said. "I'll be back in a bit." And he headed off.


	6. Chapter 6

George knew Annie was there before she said anything to announce her presence. He wasn't sure if it was a sense, or if he knew her scent perhaps, though the dead had very little smell. Or if he had heard her 'appear', teleport, whatever it was called, her mode of travel. She didn't breath. She was silent as the grave you might even say. But he knew she was there.

It was night in the hospital by now, and they'd moved him from the observation room to another ward. It wasn't a private room, but that night, by some chance, the second bed lay empty meaning that there was no one there to disturb his solitude. Until she'd shown up.

They'd taken away most of the gumpf as well, the sensors, the oxygen, but he still had a drip in his arm and was highly aware of the large needle resting under his skin, the cold, unreal feeling of saline flowing into his vein. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but then none of this was high living. He'd curled himself on his side as much as he could with the Everest-like pile of pillows they seemed to insist that he have, and pulled the thin covers up over the delightful hospital gown he was now sporting. The sooner Mitchell brought him some decent pajamas, the better.

But he couldn't sleep. Hospitals just weren't conducive to it, and in any case, apart from the fact that he was feeling really shit – presumably from whatever was happening in his system as a result of the pills he'd taken - he had too much to think about, too many decisions to make.

The day had been one long procession of people coming in and lecturing him or offering comfort. He'd had a quite ridiculous conversation with a psychologist somewhere between Nina's angry tirade, and Mitchell's attempt at bucking him up. Trying to realistically explain why you tried to kill yourself without mentioning any of the actual facts, which would, he was damn sure, have seen him instantly sectioned under the mental health act, was quite a challenge. And an exhausting one. They'd had this talk that was like cat and mouse, every question loaded with meaning and every answer analyzed to death. He'd been hugely relieved when the guy had left, even when his replacement had been that hospital chaplain, who was now acting so oddly around him that George was beginning to wonder if he was hitting on him. But then he'd remember that he'd confessed murder to the guy, and although the subject didn't come up again, it hung over their conversation like an angry in-law, silent, but ready to find fault at any moment.

All these visitors had been kicked out at closing time, but for George, that didn't make their conversations go away. For him, what he'd done had been such a personal thing - it was after all, the ultimate selfish act - so to have it fail, and to be left with all these other issues, to have made his situation worse, in fact, was something he was having to find ways to deal with. And the words that people had said to him that day, their concern, their confusion, their clumsy attempts at making him feel better, wouldn't leave him alone.

The ironic thing, however, was that in the midst of it all he was beginning to feel a little more like himself again. After Nina had confessed that he'd scratched her, for those hours afterwards, he literally felt as though he'd fallen into a black hole. There was nothing in the entire universe except his misery, and that misery was everywhere, it was over everything. It covered all his memories, even happy ones (especially happy ones) dulling them in his mind until they became inconsequential, and he could no longer remember ever having been happy. And if he'd never been happy, then it stood to reason, that he was never going to be happy again. As he'd said, he didn't deserve happiness. All that would follow him was misery and sorrow and that feeling of guilt which never left him alone. It was awful. And he'd woken to that same feeling earlier that day. But as the day had gone on, and he'd been forced to talk about things and face up to things, a little bit of George had crept back into him. He saw his life again as it really was, tarnished to be sure, but hardly the black mess that his mind had made it when it had persuaded him to take every pill he could find in the house and then lie down on the bed and wait to die. He started to hope again, just a little bit, but it was enough to make his mind spin and think, and stop him from sleeping.

Having Annie in the room was actually a little bit of a welcome distraction to all that.

"I do know you're there," he said eventually, not bothering to turn over of shift his eyes in her direction.

"I wondered if you did." He heard her moving closer to the bed, even though she moved with no noise. "Still having trouble sleeping?"

George turned, stretching slightly and shifting, rubbing at his ear with a finger. "Annie, did anyone ever tell you that you are a master of the understatement, or should that be a mistress?"

He smiled at her a little, showing that no ill-feeling was meant, and she came closer, putting a hand on his arm.

"How are you?" she asked, her eyes betraying her concern.

"Alive," he shrugged a little.

"Yeah, I'm glad about that," she shot back. "Don't want any more dead people around here, thank you."

"Hm," he muttered. "Yes, George the ghost would have been an interesting proposition I suppose."

"You meant to do it then," Annie asked slightly awkwardly. "It wasn't one of those cry for help things, 'cause my mum did that once."

"What, a cry for help?"

She nodded. "Took a bunch of pills. But she called my dad, and then the ambulance, so she wasn't really trying to die. She was just making a statement."

"Well I wasn't," he clarified.

"You really wanted to die?"

"I did last night."

"And now?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"I can't imagine that," she admitted. "Wanting to be dead. I just always remember being full of life, whatever was going on."

"I'll swap ya," he said sardonically.

Her eyes opened a bit wider. "In a heartbeat," she whispered passionately.

George dropped his head back deeper into the pillows. There was nothing like having a friend who was a ghost to make you really appreciate what death meant. It was like how hanging out with Mitchell made him really appreciate sunny days.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "This must all seem a bit – puerile to you."

"I'm just worried about you," she said. "Death isn't what you think, it isn't what anybody thinks. It's not an end, George, not the way you wanted it to be."

"No," he sighed. "That would be too easy, thinking that there was an end to all of this. I'm just being punished."

"For what?"

"I dunno. Something. Something bad clearly."

"And what, being kept alive is your punishment?"

"No, not being allowed to escape it is. Annie, I spent the first 6 months of being a werewolf running away. I was on the move all the time, I slept in homeless shelters, I slept in an abandoned car one night. I was desperate to run away from it, to keep it from becoming part of anything that I remembered of me. But it keeps following me, wherever I go. I can't leave it behind. So what I decided to do was not have a life, to not let that 'me' exist again. I killed that part of myself in many ways, but it didn't work, because life got in the way. Mitchell got in the way. Nina…" he broke off, heartsick at the thought of her. "Nina, got in the way," he finished, quietly.

"So you decided you'd finish the job," Annie said condescendingly. "Kill yourself off for real."

"You don't understand," he protested.

"Yes, yes I do!" she exclaimed. "I understand you better than anyone. And I know that it's pointless, completely pointless what you tried to do. Death isn't an answer to the problems of living. It isn't nice, it isn't a convenient ending. If you'd gone like that, you would have ended up like me, wandering around, not able to eat, not able to sleep, just in limbo."

"I would have escaped the wolf though," he pointed out.

She just shrugged. "Maybe you would have been a ghost wolf."

He looked horrified at the concept, so she moved quickly on.

"But to go through that, to go through death. George it's - it's not like you close your eyes and it's all fluffy birds and little angels sitting on clouds. Death isn't gentle and kind. It's screaming horror. It's darkness. I'm a ghost for god's sake!"

His face changed slightly, and he toyed with a bobble in the hospital sheets. "What's it like - death?" he asked. "What happens? You say there aren't angels. What is there?"

"You asked me that once before."

"Yeah, and I'm asking you again, because I don't actually believe what you told me that time. You were fobbing me off, and I let you, because I wanted you to. But I think – I need to know Annie."

Her face was full of misery and fear. "I can't tell you that George. I told Owen, and look what it did to him."

George looked at her piercingly. "It's really that bad?"

She put her head to one side, trying not to cry. "It's not – it's just different. It's just something that the living have no concept of. People want comfort after they die, they want to know that there's something good afterwards, but that concept of good and bad doesn't exist there."

There was a silence between them.

George had gone back to toying with the bed sheet. "Nina said that I died last night," he said eventually. "That my heart stopped."

Annie nodded. She remembered Nina coming back from seeing him, and how scared she'd looked.

"And I think I saw something," he went on, like he was confessing. He glanced up at her to see her reaction, but her face didn't give anything away.

"What did you see?"

He gave a half shrug. "I don't know," he muttered. "People say that you see things when they die, and that idea gets in your head, doesn't it. It's hard to separate the two."

"What do you think you saw?"

George shook his head. "A light," he said. "I guess. A corridor – that's what people say they see isn't it. A light at the end of a corridor." But then his eyes narrowed, almost as if he was trying to see that corridor in his mind's eye, squinting down it, trying to remember. "But there was something else," he whispered. "Something – waiting…"

"What?" Annie was a little breathless.

"I don't know," he said. "Something – or someone there. I don't know. It was…I can't remember. It's like trying to hold onto a dream."

Their eyes met again, and Annie hid her relief by giving him a comforting smile. She held the secret of death inside her, as all those who had died were forced to do. And it was something that she was convinced the living should be protected from, even more so now that she'd seen what the truth of it had done to Owen. Certainly it was something that she wanted to keep from George.

"Don't worry about it," she advised. "You didn't die, George, not for real. And I'm hoping you're not going to die for a long time to come. You're too important to us, okay."

He smiled, but it was a smile of sorrow, as something about what she'd said, or the way she'd said it maybe, or just everything that had happened to him that day, made his eyes well up with tears.

Annie came forward, and he allowed her to hug him, crying silently on her shoulder as if trying to wash the fear and the pain away.

---

"You're feeling better today then?" Mitchell asked as he watched George eat his hospital dinner cautiously, poking at items with his fork as if trying to determine what they were before allowing them anywhere near his mouth.

"Yeah, they said I could probably go home tomorrow," he said, selecting something, and eating it cautiously. "They're still waiting on the results of a couple of tests but most of what I took has already worked its way through my system – charming as the outcome was."

"Well, what do you expect when you do something that stupid."

George fixed him with a look.

"Hey, I'm just saying what you need to hear," Mitchell said, perfectly comfortable with George's anger, glad of it. At least he was feeling something other than suicidal. "Good thing you're getting out now."

"And why's that?" he asked, trying to find something else edible on his plate.

"Only two days to your time of the month."

"Mm," George considered the point. "Yes, that might have been a hard one to explain."

"Have you talked to Nina again?"

He shook his head. "Not since yesterday. She's not been back. Part of me is quite relieved actually, gives me time to think things through properly. What do you think this is?" he asked, holding up his fork with something impaled on the end of it for Mitchell to identify.

The vampire leaned forward. "A carrot?" he guessed.

"Shouldn't it be – I don't know – orange or something?" George wondered. "I mean how do they expect people to get healthy around here eating this stuff."

"You've been serving it to them for long enough," Mitchell pointed out. "Have you ever questioned the quality before?"

"No, but then I didn't have to eat it before," George said, placing the 'carrot' back on his plate and selecting something else instead.

"Are you going to talk to her again?" Mitchell pursued.

George looked uncomfortable and played with his food some more. "I'll have to," he said. "I can't let her do this on her own."

"You thought about where you'll transform?"

"Nope," he put his fork down and leant back into his pillows wearily. "We can't do it together, that's for sure."

Mitchell looked confused. "Why not?"

George regarded him with a scathing look. "We'll attack each other," he said. "Two werewolves together? You know how violent that thing is."

"Maybe you won't," Mitchell said. "If you know each other."

George shook his head. "Doesn't make any difference," he said. "As soon as I start to change I lose all my higher brain functions. I'd attack my mother if she was standing in front of me, even if she was changing into a werewolf too. You don't know what you're doing to be able to control it like that. It just wants to kill."

So he'd gone back to referring to the werewolf as an it. It was a notable step backwards.

He sighed, frustrated. "But I want to _be_ there," he went on. "I can't leave her alone to just change. It's horrific."

"You were alone the first time,' Mitchell pointed out.

"And it was horrific," George confirmed.

"Maybe we can figure something out," Mitchell said, pondering. "Something so that you can be together but separated."

"What do you mean?"

"I dunno. Let me think about it."

"Well, in any case, I need to talk to her first. Give her more of an idea of what's going to happen."

"You sound like you've accepted it all anyway."

He picked up his fork again. "Don't have much choice," he said. "It's happened, I've got to move on. It's what everyone keeps telling me to do."

"It's what you need to do," Mitchell said.

"I'm – sorry," George said, looking pointedly at his dinner. "For what I did – for causing so much trouble."

"Hey," Mitchell said. "I understand. I know what you were going through. I'm just glad it's turned out okay. And I'm sorry I couldn't have been there for you more. I thought you just needed time, but you didn't. You needed support, and I let you down."

George looked up at him. "You've never let me down Mitchell. Not once in all this time."

Mitchell smiled. "Neither have you," he said.

A little moment passed between them, and then George cleared his throat. "Well," he said, picking up a green bean with his fork. "That wasn't gay at all."


	7. Chapter 7

They ended up sitting round the kitchen table the next night, almost as if nothing had happened. George had been let out of hospital that morning with a more or less clean bill of health. The doctors were still puzzling over his weak heart, but not so much that they needed to keep him in and investigate it further. They'd run a series of ECGs while he'd been in, and found no further anomalies, so all they could really do was clock it up as another medical mystery, and warn him to watch for any unusual symptoms in the future. The pills he'd swallowed in an attempt to end his life hadn't done any lasting harm, but he'd been lucky. They made very sure he was aware of that. He could have ended up with permanent liver damage, or even brain damage. Instead he was walking away with his life and his health intact. They did sign him up to a course of treatments with a therapist, however, something he was just so looking forward to. But he'd been lucky. Very lucky.

The other two were just happy to have him back, happy to have their household completed again. It never seemed right when one of them was missing, and every crisis they went through seemed to bring them closer together, make them appreciate what they had.

Now they were just chatting, calmly, laughing. Annie was telling a story about something she'd seen at the hospital, in a room that she'd accidentally appeared in, and received quite a shock to see one of the doctors playing doctor with one of the nurses. Both George and Mitchell knew who she was talking about, so the story went down well, and they drank their tea and coffee, and tried to imagine that things were getting back to normal.

But they weren't quite there yet. One day before his transformation, George was anxious and twitchy. He hadn't managed to speak to Nina again: she hadn't been in the hospital when he'd been discharged. One of her friends told him that she'd gone home sick the day before, and didn't know when she'd be back. She looked at him oddly when she spoke, judging, slightly disdainful.

George had turned away quickly, feeling ashamed and didn't go to seek Nina out at home, though he had left messages on her phone: heartfelt apologies and pleadings for her to talk to him. He said that she needed help, and he could help her, and that he was sorry, so sorry for what had happened.

They all flinched at the banging knock on the front door and looked at each other, questioningly. George got slowly to his feet. He was still a bit sore, mostly from where they'd shocked him when his heart stopped, but his hesitation was more of an emotional reluctance to face the outside world again.

"I'll go," he said, grimacing, and picked up his glasses from the table as he walked away. It was a habit. As usual, his eyesight was now 20:20, a gift from the wolf. He wouldn't need his glasses again for several days. But he put them on anyway and looked through the clouded glass in the door.

It was her.

They faced each other in the doorway. It was one of those moments.

They don't happen very often, those moments. They were points were something had happened between two people, something incredible, or awful or fantastic. Something that couldn't be ignored, or swept away as most things now were between people. It was something that had to be addressed, and although the outcome was uncertain, it always involved change.

He opened the door wide, inviting her in without words, and she complied. He couldn't read the expression on her face and she stepped into the living room and looked around, catching sight of Mitchell and Annie in the kitchen, and turning away from them quickly.

George sensed her desire for privacy.

"Uh – do you – want to go upstairs?" he suggested quietly.

"Sure," she said, and headed instantly for the steps in front of them.

George glanced at his housemates, who gave him a sympathetic look, then he headed after her.

Nina had stripped off her bag and her jacket by the time he reached his room. It was clean and tidy, all the debris left by his misadventure and the activities of the paramedics now cleared away, his bedding changed (presumably by Annie), little lying around.

George closed the door behind him as he went in, holding on to the door handle briefly in a reluctance to face her. But then he let go and faced up to what he had to do.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, turning towards her.

"Funny," she said. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

"I'm fine," he said quietly.

"I'm – raging," she said, nodding. "Really, really, really – just…" she didn't have the words.

"I know," he whispered.

She blew out a breath. "This – feeling it's just so – wild – so powerful. Is this it, is this what it means to be us, to be what we are?"

He nodded. "The wolf starts to…" he tipped his head to the side, hands in his pockets, as he tried to find the right word. "Take you over. It's always like this. It's under your skin by now."

"I can hear things," she exclaimed. "People talking down the street, I can hear every word they say. And the smells – Jesus! How can you stand being at the hospital when it's like this? It's overpowering!"

"You get used to it – or you learn to accept it anyway."

"It's incredible," she went on. "I feel like an animal George, like nothing can touch me, like nothing can stop me!"

He went up to her. "Nina, you've got to control it."

"Why?" she demanded.

"Because it's not who you are," he insisted. "You're a nurse, you're smart, you're funny, you're not afraid of anyone. You're only this, only the wolf for one day a month. Don't let it take you over, or imagine that you can lose yourself in it. Because you can't. You're human, you're not this. You're not an animal."

"But I am, George," she said, her voice scary. She came right up to him. "And so are you." She looked around, seeing the light of the almost full moon falling through the window. "Do you remember the night we first kissed," she whispered. "It was here, on this bed, and the moon was like this. Is that why you stopped? You were afraid of this feeling, the animal, afraid of what would happen if you let it out. And that's what happened the next day wasn't it? You were about to change when you fucked me in that room at the hospital. Do you remember that?" She came even closer to him, touching him.

He could smell her, feel her. She was his world. She was everything he wanted.

"Do you remember what it was like? Don't you want that again?" She turned her face up towards his, her mouth open, willing.

"I do," he muttered. "Oh God Nina, I do. But you can't let it rule you."

"Why not?" she said, leaning even closer. "Isn't this what we are? Isn't this what you made me?"

He felt his heart skip a beat. "I didn't want to make you like me," he said. "I never wanted this for you."

"But this is who I am now," she whispered.

He closed his eyes, breathing hard, struggling with his feelings and his screaming desires, and this pain within him, this terrible overpowering drive that threatened to tear away every scrap of humanity and turn him into the beast that he feared more than anything in the world.

"You can't hurt me any more George," he heard Nina say. "You can let go."

A single tear dropped from the corner of his eye, and he opened them again, his pupils dilating as her face came once more into view.

"You can let go," she whispered again.

And then, in a rush of movement, and emotion, and hurt and joy…

He did.

---

Annie and Mitchell looked up, momentarily confused by the bang from overhead that sounded as though a large, heavy item of furniture had been knocked over and sent crashing to the ground.

"What on earth?" Annie said. "Is she throwing things at him?"

Mitchell opened his mouth, suddenly aware of what was probably going on.

More bangs followed, and someone crying out, possibly in pain. Possibly not.

"I think they're – working things out," he said cryptically.

"By violence?" Annie questioned. "That's not very healthy. Shouldn't we go and see if he needs help?" she got to her feet.

"No!" Mitchell cried, grabbing her cold arm. "I'd – um, I'd leave them to it."

"But Mitchell, she might be hurting him!"

Another cry came, a distinctively George-ish shriek. They both looked at the ceiling, as though the plasterboard could somehow reveal what was happening. There was another crash.

"Yeah – I think he's probably enjoying it," Mitchell told her.

"He's…?" she looked at him, totally confused. And then realization hit her. "Oh," she said. "Oh – you mean they're…"

"I think it's quite likely," he said.

Annie sat back down. "Oh," she said again.

"Yeah."

"I didn't think he was the type."

Mitchell smiled and picked up his mug. "It's wolf time," he said. "I think there may actually be an advantage for him in having a girlfriend who's a werewolf too. It's probably not something he's even thought about. But he was always so worried about hurting her." He took a drink. "I don't think he needs to be worried any more."

"Gosh," Annie said.

There was another crash, and then a banging noise set in.

"You think they're destroying the room?" she asked.

"Ah, it's only a room," Mitchell smiled. "Come on, you want to go out?"

The banging sound got louder. Annie looked at the ceiling once more, slightly primly. "Yeah," she said. "That sounds like a good idea."

Mitchell grabbed his coat off the back of his chair, still smiling, as they both got to their feet and headed quickly for the door.

---

George reached for Nina's cigarette and took a draw of it, eliciting a look of confusion and scorn from his girlfriend.

"You don't smoke," she pointed out.

He coughed. "Oh, yeah," he said, his face screwing up, and he coughed again, looking around for the glass of water that was usually sitting on his chest of drawers. But if there had been a glass there once, it was now smashed into very small pieces and hidden amongst the rest of the debris on the floor. He swallowed uncomfortably and handed the cigarette back to her. She smiled, amused by him, and took it.

"How do you smoke those?" he wondered.

"Practice," she said, blowing out smoke, and surveying the general destruction of the room. "We made a bit of a mess," she commented.

"No, we made a lot of a mess," he corrected cheerfully, his eyes moving from the wardrobe, now lying on its front, with clothes spewing out from under its splayed doors, to the bed, which was turned on its side the sheets in disarray, one of the pillows poking out from its torn case, feathers leaking out like innards from a gutted animal.

Nina laughed, pulling the duvet up further round her chest. "Why do you have such a small room anyway?" she asked. "Mitchell's room's much bigger than yours. How did you let that happen?"

"He wanted it north facing," he said rubbing his face with his hands. "Less sunlight."

She smiled. "Bloody vampires."

"Yeah," George agreed. "They don't like us, you know."

"What, werewolves?"

"Mm," he confirmed. "Watch yourself with that. A bunch of them tried to beat me to death once."

"How did you get away?" she wondered, flicking ash onto a broken saucer she'd found among the debris.

"Mitchell saved me," he said. "That's how we met."

"Why did he stop them if vampires don't like us?"

George shook his head, raising his eyebrows. "I don't know. He just didn't think they should be beating up perfectly innocent lycos I suppose."

She smiled again. "Lycos?"

"Lycanthropes," he said, almost amused by the word.

"Well," she said, taking another drag. "That's a new one."

"Yeah, I think there might be quite a lot of new things happening in your life from now on." He leaned forward and kissed her tenderly. She leaned into it, prolonging it as long as possible.

Then they drew apart.

"I can't believe," she said, her eyes still closed. "That you stopped that night."

"What, that first night with you?" he said.

"Yeah. It must have killed you."

He shrugged. "I didn't want to kill you. When I realized I was losing control, something just – kicked in, and I couldn't do it any more."

"What, even though you could have been having the best sex ever?" she asked incredulously.

"Some things are more important," he said seriously.

She sighed. "It's going to be hell, isn't it."

"What?"

"The transformation tomorrow."

He moved closer to her, put his arm around her. "It is," he admitted. "But you will endure it, and it won't kill you. I think that was what was worst about the first time for me, that fear of death." He took in a deep breath. "I didn't think you could be in that much pain and not die. But then I woke up the next day, and I was naked, and I was cold, and I was alone. But I was alive, Nina. It didn't kill me, and it won't kill you."

She settled in to his embrace. "I guess there's nothing I can do," she said. "You ever thought about taking drugs or something?"

"What, like pain killers?"

"Yeah, a good shot of diamorphine just before it happens."

He chortled. "If you want. Though I'm not sure adding drug addiction to being a werewolf is something I want to try."

"Mm," she took a final drag and stubbed out her cigarette. "So talk me through it," she said. "Tell me exactly what happens."


	8. Chapter 8

Mitchell leaned on the railings looking out over the river. The sky had that warm, dark glow that was the legacy of a recently set sun, and patches of dull red could still be seen reflected off the high spring clouds above, and mirrored palely in the rippling water below. But he wasn't looking at the clouds, or even at the river. His eyes had been drawn by a small group of people opposite who were clustered around a dark car. Occasionally one or two of them would look his way, sometimes pointedly saying something about him without ever raising their voices loud enough so that he could hear.

They were vampires, some of the ones he'd met in Herrick's new little circle. Now that there leader was gone, and that the two other oldest members of the gang, namely him and Seth, were also no longer with them, they hadn't managed to draw themselves together enough to prove any kind of a threat to him, or anyone else other than the down and outs, the lost and the helpless that they were no doubt - no doubt - continuing to kill.

Mitchell toyed with his cigarette. There was no point in trying to stop it. For most vampires, killing was what they did, it was natural, it was life giving. They didn't need to do it, he was proof enough of that. But for the others, he at least had sympathy and understanding. If any of them wanted to walk his road, to choose to abstain, he'd help them, if they asked. But they had to ask. He wasn't going to go in there and try preaching to them, that wasn't what he was about. He wasn't evangelical about being on the wagon, because he knew how hard it was. You had to want it, you couldn't just be talked into it.

He had seen them coming here a couple of times before, eyeing up the hospital almost hungrily, but always from a distance, always staying on the other side of the river. This night, he thought he'd come down, stand where they could see him, just in case. You never knew, and he might not be evangelical, but that didn't stop him from being hopeful.

But none of them had come over. None of them had said anything to him, or tried to make contact. He'd expected at least to hear some insults or anger at the death of Herrick, but there was nothing. He sensed they were actually afraid of him, or wary of him certainly, and didn't want to come into conflict.

It was strange really. They were after all his own people. But now he was as distant from them as he was from the people walking around behind him, the human beings, the ones he could never be like again. He didn't belong anywhere now, not in their world, and not in the shadow world of blood and tears.

He smiled, the concept not bothering him at all. He was his own person, and if he stayed like this forever. He could take it. He was strong enough. The events of the last few days had proved that to him if nothing else.

"Mitchell?"

He turned and saw George and Nina standing behind him. They were both carrying bags. Nina was looking quietly terrified, but obviously trying to hide it.

Suddenly there was a bit of noise from across the river, and one or two of the vampires started hurling lurid insults their way. One of them even howled derisively.

George's face clouded in anger briefly and he took a step towards them, but then he seemed to get a hold of himself and turned away.

"Just ignore them," he said to Nina.

"Are they – vampires?" she asked, staring with wide-eyed curiosity at the group of people. "Are they all vampires?"

"Mm," Mitchell confirmed, taking a last drag of his cigarette and stamping it out under foot. "But he's right, ignore them. Come on."

"So are you going to tell us what this grand plan of yours is?" George asked.

"You'll see," Mitchell said, and led them in through the large back doors of the hospital, taking one final glance at the vampires across the river.

"You want us to change in the hospital?" George asked incredulously. "You've actually found somewhere in the hospital?" He was keeping close to Nina, touching her subtly to comfort her whenever he could.

"Just relax George. I've got it all in hand." Mitchell held a door open for Nina, who didn't seem to be paying close attention to where she was going.

George noticed it too, and put his arm round her, becoming her guide. She reached down with her hand and grasped the hem of his shirt, wrapping it round her fingers.

"So those guys, those vampires," George said. "Is that the remainder of Herrick's little gang?"

"Some of them," Mitchell said, leading them onwards. "There were a lot more of them, but they're likely to have broken up, formed factions and spread out. A core will hang on to the funeral parlour I'm sure, it's a good base, Herrick set things up pretty well for them there."

"Who's Herrick?" Nina asked a little aimlessly.

"He's the one George…" Mitchell broke up, glancing at his housemate.

"He's the one I killed that night," George said to her quietly, kissing the top of her head.

"Oh," she said, probably not taking it in. "Are we going to be there soon? Only it feels like it's – coming."

"We've got time," George said soothingly. "I know if feels like that, but we've got time. Mitchell?" he looked up at the vampire questioningly, asking him silently where they were going.

Mitchell had never seen George like this before, so attentive and caring. It was beautiful somehow. Incredibly human in the face of what was just about to happen.

"We're almost there," he said.

George looked around. "Aren't you just taking us back to the isolation rooms?" he asked confused.

Mitchell smiled at him. "You'll see," he said, and pushed open one final door.

He had indeed been taking them back to the isolation rooms, the same one George had liked to use before he'd been kicked out into the woods. The one he'd killed Herrick in. And standing outside the door was the unexpected figure of the hospital chaplain.

George stopped, not understanding what was going on.

"What's – what's he doing here?"

"He wanted to be here," Mitchell explained.

"You mean…" he drew away from Nina and closer to Mitchell. "He knows?" he hissed.

"Yeah."

"George," Mark said, coming over.

"Oh Jesus!" George exclaimed. "What the fuck did you tell him for!"

"He was going to figure it out," Mitchell said animatedly. "He'd figured half of it out anyway."

"Half of it's not all of it," George protested.

"George," Mark said again. "It's okay."

"Who's definition makes this okay!" he screeched. "Like this night wasn't stressful enough for everyone," he waved his hand around. "You had to make it – " He broke off, realizing that Nina was no longer standing where he'd left her. Instead, she'd crossed behind them and was on the threshold of the isolation room, looking inside tentatively. George instantly forget about everything else, and dropping his bag, rushed over beside her.

"Nina," he said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "Shouldn't we be getting on with this? It's coming."

"I know," he whispered. Then he turned. "Mitchell, what's your plan? I told you we couldn't change together."

"Ah, but you won't have to," he said, coming over beside them and pushing past into the room. They followed him. "You were down here so many times," he said. "But I guess you never noticed it because you were - you know – occupied with other things." He walked to the back of the room, where George saw that there was doorway into another room, and that the doorway had a barred fence on it which, while open now, also had a padlock hanging from it.

"Oh my God!" he exclaimed. "How did I not see that?" He joined Mitchell beside the gate and gave it a heft with his hands to see how strong it was. "It's perfect." He stepped into the other room and looked around it, making sure there was no way out and that it was big enough for a bit of movement to stop the wolf from feeling too caged. "It's perfect." He came out again with a smile on his face. "Thank you," he said to Mitchell.

"What, so we change in here?" Nina asked him. "Both of us?"

"Yeah," he said. "One of us in here, one of us in there. It means we can be together until the last minute, but once we change, we won't be able to hurt each other."

Nina looked around. "It's a bit cold," she said.

"It'll be fine once you're changed," George said going up to her. "You'll have a bit more – you know – body covering - stuff."

"You mean hair," she said, fixing him with a look.

"Yeah," he agreed, smiling again.

"So, this is good for you both," Mitchell said.

"It's perfect," George said, turning back to him. "What are the two of you going to do?" he asked of Mitchell and the chaplain, who'd now wandered into the room as well.

"Well, I'd wanted to just let you know that I was here for you," Mark said. "If you needed anything."

"Thanks," George said, still confused and uncomfortable with his presence.

"And that, if it's okay with you, I'd like to stay outside and pray for you, for both of you. I won't watch or anything, I just wanted to give some support. And I guess, being what I am, this is what I can do. But I know you're not Christian or anything so I wanted to make sure it was okay."

"Oh," George was most surprised at the fact he wouldn't be watching. He'd become so used to the transformation being something of a spectator sport, that he presumed now that everyone wanted to see what happened. "That would be, fine." He looked at Nina. "Would that be okay?" he asked her.

"Yeah, sure, whatever. I don't care," she said clearly just wanting now to get on with it.

Mitchell read between the lines. "Okay, we'll leave you to it," he said, bouncing over to George quickly. He smiled at him, and they hugged briefly. George pulled off his Star of David, and handed it over along with his glasses. Then Mitchell turned to Nina. "I'll see you after," he said, going up to her.

She smiled at him and reached out her arms for a hug as well. "Thank you Mitchell," she said genuinely grateful.

He pulled back, and made to leave, taking the chaplain by the arm as he did so. "I've got a spare key for that," he said, pointing at the gate and the padlock. "And I'll be back in the morning." He closed the door behind them. George followed, and threw the bolt on the main door, sealing them in.

---

Outside, Mitchell and Mark stood awkwardly.

"I'm going to – pray," Mark explained, taking out a bible from his pocket. "Will that be a problem for you?"

"It might be," Mitchell said. "But I'm not planning to stay too long anyway. Just to check they're okay."

"I might read something out, too," Mark went on.

"Okay, well, if it's gets too much, I'll leave," he said. "But you should do what you came here to do."

"Is it going to be bad?"

Mitchell just looked at him, and didn't answer.

---

Inside the room, George had locked Nina in the smaller section, figuring it would be more private for the morning. And they'd both stripped, their clothes neatly piled nearby. Their bags they'd left outside the main door where they were unlikely to be discovered. Then all they needed to do was wait.

Nina was kneeling on the floor by the bars. She'd brought a blanket, and had wrapped it around her shoulders in an effort to both preserve her modesty, and stay warm.

George wasn't bothered, a hand over his groin, pacing about, looking more wound up than she'd seen him all day.

"George," she said softly. "Come here."

He looked down at her, but didn't do as she said immediately.

"It's coming," he said, pacing like an animal.

"I feel it," she said. "It's like a fire waiting to burn."

"Yeah," he agreed. "A storm building."

"I'm – scared," she admitted quietly. That got his attention, and his face softened. He crossed to the bars and kneeled down in front of her, taking her hands in his.

"I'm here," he said. "Don't be afraid."

She smiled at him, a soft smile that he knew so well, that he longed to see, that he saw in his dreams sometimes.

"You know,' she said, stroking his hand. "I imagined so many things for my life. I imagined having children, I imagined, I don't know, being happy, being sad perhaps. All those things that you think will come in the future when you're young and you don't know anything about what life is about. But, somehow I never imagined this."

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Hey," she said. "I thought we'd moved past that."

He looked down, fighting the shame.

"George," she said. "Whatever happens here, I will never blame you."

Then suddenly she gasped, and he felt her hands tighten spasmodically on his. She cried out, and he closed his eyes at the cracking sound coming from her body

"Oh – God," she said, breathing quickly. "I felt something move! I actually felt something move inside me."

"It's your internal organs starting to shift," he said sympathetically. "It's usually what happens first."

"Oh," she cried. "Oh, that was - unpleasant."

He tried to look her in the eye, to focus her, then flinched as something twisted inside him as well, but he fought back the scream that wanted to break through. She noted his discomfort, and grasped his hands tighter.

"George," she cried, tears in her eyes.

"It's okay," he gasped out, his eyes also red, but he tried to smile.

"George, I love you," she said.

"And I love you," he said decisively.

Then it struck them both, and they opened their mouths to scream.

---

Outside, Mark almost dropped his bible at the sound. He looked at Mitchell in shock, but the vampire had shut his eyes, as he always did when he witnessed the sound of George enduring the curse. But now, along with his screams, there was a second voice, a second scream. Nina's scream.

Mark fumbled through his bible, looking for Isaiah and a passage that he had marked out. Then he began to read, and as he did, Mitchell opened his eyes in amazement at the words, showing none of the discomfort that Mark had been expecting.

Next door, the screams continued, agonizing, awful, and slowly they began to change, to deepen and become things brought to life through a terrible, unnatural birth. They became the voices of monsters, howling in pain.

But through it all, Mark read, tears streaming down his face, hoping that somehow his voice would bring some comfort to those near him, those in most need.

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb," he said. "And the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

Fin


End file.
